Theatre review: Thorn In Their Side: Nursing the Thistle of Scottish Political Theatre, The Scottish Parliament

IT WAS the kind of event that leaves everyone with a favourite moment or memory.

For some, it will be the songs of Arthur Johnstone, the veteran singer of Glasgow working-class life who recently appeared between acts in the National Theatre of Scotland’s Men Should Weep. For others, it will be the sound of Liz MacLennan, widow and partner of the great John McGrath of 7:84, reflecting on just how busy her brilliant husband would be if he were still alive in the age of the Occupy movement. For me – well, I’m torn. There was rising star playwright Kieran Hurley with an unforgettable riff on the radical legacy of Gil Scott Heron, or Peter Arnott’s testy dialogue with his fellow-dramatist Bertolt Brecht, or a great song about prejudice against asylum-seekers from Cora Bissett’s forthcoming show Glasgow Girls; or half a dozen other brilliant insights into the special energy that drives artists who choose to engage directly with the rights, and the wrongs, of the society they live in.

Presented in the members’ restaurant at the Scottish Parliament, as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s hugely successful Staging The Nation series on the story of Scottish theatre, Nursing The Thistle was superbly curated by director Graham McLaren and 7:84 and Wildcat veteran David MacLennan, now the producer of the Play, Pie and Pint seasons at Oran Mor, who put together the series of three-minute live interventions from current Scottish theatre artists that gave the whole evening such a sharp creative edge.

The session was a little short on analytical answers to the underlying question of why Scotland creates so much strong political theatre, and about whether our sense of ourselves as a nation defined by opposition would change with independence. What it achieved, though, was a rare balance between paying tribute to a remarkable past, and celebrating the new wave of radical thought and energy now pulsing through Scottish theatre, often driven by artists well under 30.

There was the occasional lament for the demise of the Scotland-wide professional touring circuit built up by 7:84 in the 1970s. David MacLennan, though, refused to indulge in nostalgia. If there have been losses to the Scottish radical theatre since the 70s, there have also been huge gains, in the coming of venues like Oran Mor and the Arches, and of a new National Theatre built on a radical model.

And in the end, I think my favourite moment came when the playwright Nicola McCartney listed the three most important things she had learned, back in the 1990s, from her great mentor, John McGrath: that your politics has to be in your life, as well as in your art; that if you love Scotland, you will stay in Scotland and make your creative life here; and that theatre is always a dialogue between the work and the audience – or it is nothing.

Rating: ****