Dundee Rep Five stars The landscape is everywhere in Morna Young’s new version of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic novel. Conceived for Dundee Rep with director Finn den Hertog, the production sets out its expansive and impressionistic store by way of rows of soil that fill designer Emma Bailey’s stage. This is accompanied by the pulsating drone of composer Finn Anderson’s score. As the show’s eight actors step out from the banks of musical instruments lined up either side of the stage and into the fields, it is as if they are sizing up the place to see if it has any future. Once they come together for a haunting vocal chorale that seems to draw its strength from the earth under their feet, they can rest assured about that in what slowly evolves into a mighty telling of Grassic Gibbon’s story that puts the fearlessly independent figure of Chris Guthrie at its heart. Danielle Jam plays Chris with a sense of defiant pride in the face of assorted adversities that include death, sexu
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.