Review: This Breathing World

In my (albeit limited) experience, performing in a play isn’t easy, and directing a play isn’t any easier. I can only imagine that writing a play and offering it up to the theatre-going public is the biggest challenge one can take up in student theatre. This is why I have enormous respect for our brave SAND (St Andrews New Drama Festival) writers. Last night it was Catriona Scott’s turn to premiere her work.

In this hyper-modern take on Shakespeare’s Richard III, the action begins in the year 1485 A. E. (After Earth) on the planet Albion. The Barron Theatre’s natural grunginess, leather-heavy costuming, musical dissonance and monotonous loudspeaker announcements alluded to a Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque society in which the proletariat’s views are manipulated to safeguard The Party’s domination. As a dramatic presence the proletariat are essentially imperceptible, the result of which is a play that is unapologetically focussed on the agents involved in the grubby fight for power.

In the aftermath of years of civil war between the Yorkist and Lancastrian parties, it’s the Yorkists who hold power. For reasons left a little under-developed, a power-vacuum near the highest echelons of authority allow Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Tyler Anderson) to seize the chance to further his claim to the imperial crown and absolute power. To achieve his goal he enlists the support of Harriet Stafford, the ambitious Duchess of Buckingham (Helena Jacques-Morton). Together they plot and murder with such ease that it looks as though they might never be stopped.

It is at this point that the play flagged. Amoral characters are doomed to pantomime villainy if they are not challenged by a worthy opposition. From seduction to uxoricide, Richard’s relationship with the Duchess of Gloucester (Mallini Kannan) was almost farcical.  Hints of hesitating disloyalty never quite made her character add up; after all, it was Richard who killed her husband! Sophie Klasan’s performance as Buckingham’s wife produced a character that ostensibly offered more of a fight. Yet even her complex and engaging portrayal of Countess Rivers was not a convincing candidate for plausible resistance. Indeed, when the rebels finally launch an offensive, it’s the deserting Buckingham who leads them into battle. One cannot help but feel that the play would have benefitted from a more visually active court, instead of one whose whisperings and doubts were reported via second-hand sources.

The strength of Scott’s play lies in her ability to imagine a new world that we can believe Richard would inhabit with comfort. Absolutism, knuckle-duster political manoeuvrings and propaganda suits him to a tee. History, she writes in her Director’s Notes, inevitably repeats itself; an idea she plays upon with no small amount of humour.  If she can broaden and flesh out the motives of her characters, or even weave in a few new ones, she might have a good, solid play in her hands. This reviewer eagerly awaits future endeavours.

The Stand is not using star ratings for plays that go up as part of SAND.