Writer: Rona Munro
Director: Orla O’Loughlin
Designer: Becky Minto
Costume Design: Shannon Blackwood
Music: Danny Krass
Lighting: Derek Anderson
Rona Munro’s epic collection of historical past performs on Scotland’s Stuart Kings, a collection that began in 2014 with the James Plays trilogy, continues on this fifth instalment with James V: Katherine.
It’s 1528 and the Catholic Church are feeling the rumblings of the Scottish Reformation. Lutheran preacher Patrick Hamilton (Benjamin Osugo) a second cousin of the King (Sean Connor), is burned on the stake in St. Andrews for his beliefs. His 19 year-old sister Katherine (Catriona Faint) fellow believer, is arrested and dropped at Edinburgh to face trial.
Katherine is not any bizarre younger lady of her time, her eager mind and fast tongue runs rings round her accusers within the ecclesiastical court docket, however as with all these considered heretics, her destiny appears sealed. It isn’t till she examines what she holds dearest – religion or love, that her future is set.
Katherine in the end agrees to disclaim her religion throughout a personal assembly with the capricious younger King, subsequently fleeing to Berwick-Upon-Tweed. So far so fairly traditionally right. Munro strays into undocumented territory in introducing Katherine’s love story along with her younger, widowed, sister-in-law Jenny (Alyth Ross). However, it does present the motivation for Katherine’s closing choice on her destiny.
While Munro’s earlier performs within the collection have been epic in scale, James V: Katherine is a way more intimate affair. The solid of 4 play out the motion on Becky Minto’s spare, lantern-strewn set clad in Shannon Blackwood’s, black, fashionable costumes, lit superbly by Derek Anderson. There’s additionally some atmosphere-setting with the odor of burning embers because the viewers enters.
In an age when few ladies had been educated and solely required to “sew a straight seam”, and in a play the place the king asks “does anyone remember the women?” the ladies are key. The dialogue is witty, pithy and vigorous. Both Faint and Ross are charming and dynamic because the central feminine duo. Impressive too is Sean Connor because the mercurial, swaggering younger King.
In scaling again this newest instalment of her epic collection (a tidy 75 minutes) Munro has delivered a piece with extra punch, one which proves that there’s an viewers for historical past performs on the trendy theatrical stage.
Runs till 27 April 2024| Images: Mihaela Bodlovic
