When Pitlochry Festival Theatre was forced to 'go dark' earlier this year like every other theatre across the UK, it meant financial disaster. The Peforming Arts indutsry has never known such a struggle. Even during the wars, many theatres and cinemas stayed open, and people performed where and how they could. Social distancing was not the issue then It was therefore imperative that theatres started thinking outside the box, and thankfully, in our contemporary computer age, we have technology to help us. The play which was premiered last night on BBC Radio 3 and is available on iPlayer for the next month, was one such lucky happenstance. It was scheduled to be performed on stage at the theatre as part of their Summer Season, but a quick rethink, and a few rewrites by playwright David Greig (who is also the Artistic Director of The Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh), and it became a radio play and part of the BBC's 'Culture In Quarantine' season.
This play, 'Adventures With The Painted People', is a 90-minute duologue, and is a highly romanticised, almost Hollywood-esque vision of a friendship between a Pictish Witch and an African Roman Officer. If the scenario is hugely improbable - it is; then it takes exceptional talent to make it work - it did.
David Greig's play tells the story of Eithne, a Witch living in the Tayside village of Kenmore, who saves Lucius, a Roman Officer from being sacrificed in order that he might teach her the Roman language and ways. She has designs on meeting the Roman general as an equal, and being able to forge a peace between the Caledonians and the Romans. She also wants to be able to write down the verbal histories and folktales of her peoples. The Romans have already been battling against the painted tribes of the north for 7 years when our story begins, and whilst keeping him tied up and within a protected magical ring of spells in the 'House Of The Dead', she visits him every day to learn about his world. In turn, he also learns about hers, and this most unlikely friensdhip and understanding blossoms, through poetry, dreams and thoughts.
Time passes, months in fact, and it is Beltane (The Gaelic May Day), and the day on which the Pictish gods demand a sacrifice. Eithne and Lucius escape and swim up river to his legion's camp. It is time for them to part company....
Kirsty Stuart plays Eithne with girlish glee. Always keeping her speech light and sweet, she charms not just Lucius but us the audience too. It's a playful and yet sincere interpretation. Lucius is played by Olivier Huband, and it is a hugely contrasting speech pattern. Stuart's lilting Scots accent against a sturdy, rigid, almost unemotional English 'drone'. Don't get me wrong, this is not negative criticism; far from it. It is an extremely clever aural metaphor for the two people themselves and the worlds they come from. For Lucius everything is straight lines, roads, walls, bricks, stones, angular, ordered. Eithne's world is just the opposite and follows nature and nature's 'order'.
I found the premise and the lack of fear or distrust in Lucius at the start very difficult to believe. It took me a good while before I settled in to the piece but once I did, then the piece had my whole attention, and enjoyed the pair's character development and escapades
Directed by Elizabeth Newman (Artistic Ditrector of Pitlochry Festival Theatre), and assisted by Amy Liptrott, with between-scene music and extraneous sound effects by Ben Occhipinti, this is a light-hearted romantic fairystory for Scotland.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 8/6/20
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