Most of us will remember struggling to identify with the trials of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s “Sunset Song” in stuffy classrooms at school; the brutal world of crofter’s daughter Chris Guthrie being a far cry from our lives of convenience today.
Many again, however, will have picked it up in later life and realised the power of Gibbon’s classic in capturing perfectly a time passed from living memory. Indeed, so many have come to enjoy it that it was voted Scotland’s favourite novel back in 2006.
Julie Ellen’s new stage production of Sunset Song stopped over at Dundee’s Rep Theatre this week on its Scottish tour, and it was with more than a little trepidation that I attended the performance. There were so many things that I was convinced wouldn’t translate on to the stage: the introspective nature of the novel, for example, as Chrissie considers her surroundings and, most importantly, the detailed surroundings themselves.
#Sunset Song Venue no. 9 on the Sunset Song tour @DundeeRep until Sat 8th Nov pic.twitter.com/Fi4ekqUucC
— Oliver Gorman (@ORGorman) November 6, 2014
The open stage on which the performance is set, however, subtly evokes the landscape of the Guthrie’s croft perfectly: the early 1900s setting is conveyed through simple homespun costume, paraffin lamps and scuffed, wooden barrels, which do just enough to firmly place the performance in time, leaving the rest to the audience’s imagination.
My misgivings about Chrissie proved unfounded, too, as Rebecca Elise shines in the multifaceted role: strong-willed and bright, yet vulnerable and oppressed by turns, while the supporting cast particularly Alan McHugh as John Guthrie and Sandy Nelson as Long Rob are exceptional.
The bitter harshness of Chris’s life on the Blawearie croft serves to highlight the crueller aspects of religious patriarchal culture, and the resistance to change. As the First World War breaks out, the audience sees notions of socialism creep into the insular village, paving the way to suffrage, equal rights, fair wages and the human right to an adequate standard of living.
As I exited the Rep, I overheard several high school groups animatedly discussing the performance, obviously having been taken through the novel at school. They, like me, were struck by the simple fact that harsh lives like Chrissie’s played out like this all over the country a mere hundred years ago.
The realism of Guthrie’s masterpiece shines even brighter on the stage, and it is good to see that history is being kept alive through performances like this, and through theatres like the Rep’s continued devotion to Scottish heritage.
Sunset Song is at Dundee Rep until Saturday November 8. For ticket information click here.