Star rating *** As Scotland attempts to reconsider rural issues, the powers that be should take a look at this timely revival of the stage version of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel. Here, after all, is a rites of passage, not just of the story's steely heroine, Chris Guthrie, but of an entire landscape in the throes of change. As the first stand-alone in-house production by His Majesty's in many a year, just the presence of Sunset Song on home soil suggests, if not a cultural flowering, then certainly a will for such a future.
On many levels, Kenny Ireland's big, handsome-looking production of Alastair Cording's adaptation captures the world seen through Chris's eyes as she matures from restless free-spirit to independent womanhood. In Hannah Donaldson, Ireland has a vibrant lead actress who lights up the stage from her opening line through the extended flashback that follows. In the production's ensemble playing, too, Ireland and movement director Andrew Panton orchestrate a fluid and nimble-footed set of stage pictures dominated by a series of quick-fire projections and set to Paul Anderson's live fiddle-led score.
Somehow, though, such vividly evocative attributes never quite transcend the sum of their parts. The opening half hour races along at such a rate of knots that it's hard to grab hold of any solid characterisation. Only in the slower-paced second act are things allowed to breathe enough for the full brutal poetry of the piece to grab hold. In the end, we're left with an inconsistent patchwork which at its best is a haunting elegy for a way of life that's forced Chris and everyone beside her to move on.
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