Theatre reviews: Iconic Burns | Class Act

Published on Thursday 29 January 2009 18:45

ICONIC BURNS **** ALLOWAY CLASS ACT **** TRON, GLASGOW

IT'S 7:15pm on the night before Burns Night; and in the garden of Burns Cottage at Alloway, a quiet crowd of a thousand local people, chosen by ballot, are milling around enjoying cups of mulled wine doled out by actors in mediaeval costumes. There are fairy lights and flaming torches, and a young fiddler playing his heart out. Children in cosy bobble-hats pose for photographs, hugging the big Burns bust on the lawn; and in the windows of the cottage, actors from Glasgow's Mischief La Bas street theatre company act out a series of scenes from Burns's family life – pursuit, pregnancy, parenthood – in a style that might be called crude, if Burns himself hadn't been so fond of an earthy low-life joke.

Then somewhere up the street, there's the sound of a pipe band; and the assembled street theatre artists of Europe – or so it sounds, from the multilingual babble in the crew canteen across the road – emerge into the crowd pulling the great glowing steel-wire sculpture that will be the centrepiece of the night's event, an impressive 12ft high image of Tam o' Shanter on his grey mare Meg, leaping wildly over the key-stone of the old bridge at Alloway to escape the pursuing witch Nanny. Nanny also features in the sculpture, arms outstretched, her little cutty sark flaring up behind to reveal a distinctly pert bottom. The procession moves on down through Alloway, through three floral arches bearing Homecoming 2009 messages that light up breathtakingly as the sculpture pauses beneath them; and past a funfair of vaguely Burns-related booths, also created by Mischief-La-Bas.

Then, as we reach the Brig O' Doon Hotel, the First Minister and his guests file out of their celebration Burns Supper, and we all stand gazing towards the old bridge, where the sculpture – spookily convincing against the darkness, like the very ghost of Tam and Meg – is set on the keystone at the stroke of nine, pipe bands play Burns songs, and fireworks light up the night with waterfalls, rockets, and a cameo of Burns himself, framed in the arch of the bridge.

So what was it, all this? It had elements of serious street theatre, no doubt, including a fine central image by designer and sculptor Graeme Gilmour, and world-class lighting by Phil Supple, which showed off the romantic good looks of the Alloway riverbank to terrific effect. It was in part a real cultural celebration; many people in the crowd were singing along with the Burns songs played by the bands, and seemed delighted to be in Alloway for the 250th anniversary of a poet truly loved in these parts. But it was also partly a product launch for the Burns Anniversary and the Homecoming Year, bought with 145,000 of public money from Event Scotland and South Ayrshire Council; and designed less to entertain the live audience on the night, than to provide a series of spectacular photo opportunities for images that will be circulated round the globe during Scotland's Homecoming year.

A hundred years ago – in a sharp reminder that strong collective identity always has its downside – the worldwide order of freemasons, of which Burns (like his contemporary Mozart) was a member, is said to have organised the creation by local people of huge floral arches for Burns's 150th anniversary, in a style once common across the west of Scotland; and drew 100,000 visitors to Alloway for the occasion. Last week's event was good to look at, genuinely attentive to history, commendably free of kitsch, pleasant in atmosphere, and often artistically impressive; and there are hopes that Gilmour's splendid sculpture will eventually be seen by a wider audience. At heart, though, Iconic Burns seemed like a top-down event driven by the needs of politics and tourism, with the audience in a walk-on role; rather than a grassroots, bottom-up popular celebration, of the kind Burns himself would have loved.

The Traverse's Class Act programme also has to balance the practical priorities of a wide range of funders against the insistent, unpredictable demands of art; but after 19 years of experience, the theatre has this particular balancing act down to a fine art.

Designed to give secondary school students the opportunity to work with professional playwrights to produce short scripts, and then see them performed by a fully professional company, the Class Act model has worked successfully in the Lothians, in Russia and – last autumn – in a ground-breaking project at Polmont Young Offenders Institution.

This year, though, marks its first visit to Glasgow, specially funded by the Barcapel Foundation; and on Tuesday night at the Tron, the Class Act kids from Bellahouston Academy and St Paul's High School were able to watch an A-list team of stage actors perform nine of their short plays, in swift sequence. Preoccupations ranged from violence in a supposedly romantic couple-relationship, through the long-term emotional consequences of genetic engineering to produce "saviour siblings", to the trauma of becoming a teenage mother, which appeared twice over.

Some writers struggled to escape from explanatory monologue into real drama, others risked becoming bogged down in their own jokes. But at least two of the plays – Kirsteen Webster's Two Is A Crowd, about a young man with a split personality disorder, and Scott Main and Margaret Robinson's romance-and-violence play Love And Relationships – struck me as powerful, beautifully-written microdramas; while the saviour-sibling play Dove's Wings, by a team of five from Bellahouston, contributed some really original thought and feeling on a complex 21st-century issue. And the good news is that the Class Act team will be performing the same trick all over again, at the Traverse next month; only this time, with young writers from Edinburgh and West Lothian, and a brand new set of plays.

&#149 Class Act is at the Traverse, Edinburgh, 10-11 February.