Theatre reviews: Calum’s Road | The Hunted | Twelfth Night

The tale of an epic act of DIY in the face of official neglect becomes a moving celebration of a simpler life

CALUM’S ROAD, THE TRON, GLASGOW ****

THE HUNTED, ROTHES HALLS, GLENROTHES ****

TWELFTH NIGHT, PERTH THEATRE ***

AS THE world economy groans under the strain of a huge credit crisis, it’s perhaps not surprising that some of the wiser heads around Scottish theatre are beginning to look back at the world of subsistence crofting and simple intermediate technology that many families in this country left behind only two or three generations ago. Last week, it was Eden Court and Open Book’s rousing revival of Neil Munro’s Para Handy Tales; and now here come the National Theatre of Scotland and Communicado, with a new touring version by leading playwright David Harrower of Roger Hutchinson’s book, Calum’s Road about Calum MaLeod, the Raasay man who – over a decade between 1964 and 1974 – single-handedly built a two-mile road over the hill to his beloved home village of Arnish, after the authorities had signally failed to provide the area with any road access.

In the world of hard economics, Calum’s gesture was too little, and too late; by the time he completed the road, he and his wife were the only two people left living in Arnish. Yet his story lives on, as a symbol of resistance against all the forces that drove people out of Arnish, from the superficial glitter of a credit-financed urban civilisation, to the boneheaded bureaucracy of successive municipal authorities, and the indifference of government in general to the life, the language, and the potential of an island which, in Calum’s book, gave a human being everything he could possibly need.

There’s nothing flawless about Harrower’s stage adaptation of Calum’s story, or Gerry Mulgrew’s staging of it. Both sometimes seem a shade laboured and old-fashioned, in their self-conscious combination of direct narrative to the audience, and looping live action, and the acting is sometimes uneven.

In the end, though, the story told here is of such wisdom and significance that it sweeps objections aside, and moves many in the audience to tears. Iain Macrae gives a fine performance as Calum, a difficult man of unpredictable opinions, who – when not crofting, minding the lighthouse, working as the local postman, or building his road – spent most of his time writing stroppy letters to council officials. John McGeoch’s backdrop video designs are breathtakingly beautiful. Alasdair Macrae drives the whole 95-minute show forward on a tide of music, often traditional, but sometimes inflected with the hard, electronic rhythms of the world in which we all now live; and which may at last be turning back towards places like Arnish, towards their beauty, their natural richness, and their stories, which tell us so much, and cost so little to pass on.

If Calum’s Road is the real-life story of a man who achieved something truly remarkable, 21st-century fiction for young people often seems designed to evade intractable realities, by moving fast forward into a world of supernatural fantasy. The latest touring show from leading young people’s company Visible Fictions seems like an attempt to seize that fantasy-fiction genre, and elevate it to the level of a powerful fairytale, full of moral symbolism and significance.

Played by three actors over a swift 60 minutes, on a stage furnished mainly by a sparkling grove of hanging light-bulbs, The Hunted is written by Glasgow-based playwright JC Marshall, and set in some primal forest where a rebellious orphan girl from the village follows the local hunter, in his quest to kill a monstrous white wolf. As the girl’s story reaches a crisis, it becomes strangely interwoven – through crackling voiceovers from a live microphone on stage – with the tale of a boy of our own time, who sets out on a doomed quest to avenge some wrong done to his mother; and through a series of dizzying time-slips, both the girl and the boy begin to learn huge lessons about vengeance and forgiveness, the true meaning of freedom, and the possible redemptive power of love.

At times, the story becomes downright confusing, and its flirtation with the supernatural less than helpful. Yet it features a fine, haunting score by Daniel Padden, and a heart-stoppingly beautiful performance from Kirsty Stuart as the girl, with Billy Mack and Roddy Cairns in strong support as hunter and boy; and Douglas Irvine directs with an overarching grace and sense of beauty that stays in the mind, even as the detail of the story begins to fade.

At Perth Theatre, meanwhile, new artistic director Rachel O’Riordan launches her first season with a downbeat and slightly frazzled version of Shakespeare’s mighty comedy Twelfth Night. Like many modern productions, O’Riordan’s sets the action in a crumbling aristocratic house; when the heroine Viola is shipwrecked in Illyria, after all, she finds a ruling Duke sunk in lovelorn self-indulgence, a leading lady who makes a fetish of grief, and a wealthy household riven with strife between a puritanical steward and a riotous bunch of clowns and drunkards whose dislike of him descends into brutal cruelty.

What O’Riordan’s production lacks, though, is any real sense of light and shade; as Conor Mitchell – in the role of duke’s musician Curio – tinkles the ivories in a vague evocation of the 1920s jazz age, the mood grows darker and darker, the box trees in the garden become shabby indoor broom-cupboards, and many of the cast seem completely out of their depth. Steven McNicoll makes a fine Sir Toby Belch, lording it over the “lighter people”; Andy Hockley is an excellent, melancholy Feste; and Laura O’Toole makes a poised and lovely Viola. For the rest, though, this is a production fails to add much to the sum of wisdom about this much-performed play, and lacks the light-touch sense of humour and blazing wit that is the key to every aspect of this great drama, in all its darkness and light.

• Calum’s Road is at the Tron, Glasgow, until 8 October, and on tour from Berwick to Raasay until 23 November. The Hunted is in St Andrews and Glasgow this weekend, and on tour until 15 November. Twelfth Night is at Perth Theatre until 15 October.