Edinburgh International Festival

Theatre

Burn

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Mary Brennan

Four stars

“And still my motto is: I dare!” Talismanic words from Robert Burns that Alan Cumming has now embraced in a solo dance-theatre evocation of Scotland’s national bard. In an enticing gambit akin to ‘Garbo speaks!’, he has - at the age of 57 - dared himself to dance on-stage. Enlisted Steven Hoggett and Vicki Manderson to choreograph moves that add body language to spoken text as a way of getting under the skin of Burns’ inner being, where a troubled, melancholy mindset is at odds with the outer carapace of the ploughman poet (and resolutely romantic philanderer) who beguiled society with his verses.

Dance, however, is only one aspect of a National Theatre of Scotland production that frames Cumming’s creation with an ambitious melee of video projections, specially composed music, soundscapes, lighting and special effects. The amalgamated outcome - like this Burns - feels fragmented, frenetic, frazzled. Shadows chase across the backdrop, Burns’ brief life clicks past as calendar dates, words spool into view then vanish into the ether. The music, meanwhile, shifts from nostalgic melody into jangling stridencies as Cumming delves into the physicality of shredded nerve ends and the despair of poverty, burdensome responsibilities and unfulfilled hopes.

It’s a hugely clever, complex endeavour where themes criss-cross like soul-searching tartan. As dainty ladies’ shoes drop down on teasing strings, or wee chairs laden with finery wheech in - pushed by invisible hands - we’re reminded that ‘clothes maketh the man’. Burns struts in borrowed plumes, but the man he is seems lost inside them. Scotland emerges as his abiding love - the liveliest dance has echoes of Highland Fling-ery - and by the end it’s clear that, for Cumming, his ‘auld aquaintance’ with his native land has in no way been forgotten. He dares to care - audience reactions at this premiere warmly approved.