If you didn’t grow up in Scotland, said Simon Thompson on What’s on Stage, you may well not be fully aware of the cultural significance of, and popular affection for, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel “Sunset Song”, the first in his “A Scots Quair” trilogy.
Set on the brink of the First World War in rural Mearns, it tells the story of Chris Guthrie, the clever, spirited daughter of a pious but brutal farmer. It’s a gripping, harrowing tale, but what really endears it to the Scots is Gibbon’s descriptions of the landscape and natural world – an aspect that is brilliantly conveyed in writer Morna Young’s “triumph” of a new stage adaptation.
The design, by Emma Bailey, literally puts the land at its centre: the action plays out on four pits of soil that are so integral to the drama that the earth almost becomes “an extra character”. Combined with superb use of music, dance and ritual, this is theatre that’s “close to magic”.
What we have here is a “first-class adaptation of a great Scottish novel”, agreed Mark Brown in The National. Danielle Jam brings “warmth, energy [and] intelligence” to the role of Chris, and shows a “delightfully lyrical facility” in her use of the northeastern Scots dialect Doric. Ali Craig is “powerfully disturbing” as her father. And there’s “superb” support from six actor-musicians.
The hallmark of director Finn den Hertog’s “mighty” production – which tours to Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh following its Dundee run – is the seamless fusion of text, music and movement, said Neil Cooper in The Herald. It’s a “deliriously ambitious display of total theatre”, which brings the story “magnificently to life”.
There are certainly “powerful moments” here, said Allan Radcliffe in The Times. But at points I found the use of music and movement excessive. Music is too often used to “overlay emotional resonances that should more properly be generated by the action”, said Clare Brennan in The Observer. It’s a solid production, but it “needs to dig deeper” to uncover the heart of this very human drama.
Dundee Rep (01382 223530). Until 4 May, then tours Scotland until 8 June