Dear Scotland: Five Suggestions

Further to my post on Dear Scotland, the NTS have challenged me to guess which writer has picked which portrait. I am going to have a crack at it. Five at a time...

Cunningham Graham

Johnny McKnight is going to go for James Boswell. The monologue concerns that time he had a few too many cheeky Vimtos on the Grassmarket and woke up with a right howler in bed next to him.

Zinnie Harris choose Robert Louis Stephenson. A sequel to his famous novel, Stephenson relates the time that he was stuck in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and had to kill and eat a horse. In darkness.

Louise Welsh brings Robert Burns to life, through a story of how he took a bunch of dirty pictures of Mary Campbell and was the subject of a police investigation.

Rob Drummond has a crack at James I: a mild-mannered English king by day, he switched his crown at night to become James VI of Scotland, the Bonny Ruffian of the square-circle.

Hardeep Singh Kohli fancies Cunningham Graham: while cooking up a three course meal, Graham explains why he helped to found the SNP.

Kanjoos The Miser

I am just surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often. A classic play which is more tedious the closer it gets to its original setting (unlike Greek tragedy, which resists modernisation thanks to its fundamental nature being metaphorical in the first place, French comedy needs to be fooled about with in translation, as Liz Lochhead so admirably proves every so often), a bold new cultural context - in this case, India, which gives a rich religious tradition and bright Bollywood colours and the guiding light of a contemporary comedian, Hardeep Singh Kohli who knows how to integrate awkward elements on stage (he does a Fringe show that mixes comedy and cookery).

And so, Kanjoos: The Miser. It's Moliere's knockabout laughfest given a contemporary makeover. The original might have had Catholic austerity informing the titular hero's unpleasantly tight fists holding his family, but the transfer to an upright father basing his life on Gandhi's strictures is a smart one. Everyone knows that Christianity is a killjoy, but Gandhi is a hero. Kohli is giving this miser a little bit of moral ambiguity.

Educated by Jesuits. 

I am not buying into the idea that there is a political relevance to the piece, even though I read somewhere that it was a commentary on the current economic situation: those bankers aren't misers, just greedy, self-indulgent arse and the double double dip drip recession is a convenient myth for the power hungry to sell off the state to their best mates from prep school.

Back to the play: it does have live musicians, too, taking advantage of the brilliance of Indian acoustic music. It's this kind of thing that gives multiculturalism a good name, the shameless integration of cultures, the ability to recast timeless stories in new contexts, to be bright, entertaining and charming. And like any good play, its direction asks an intriguing question before it starts: does the French comedy have a moral message that can be retained in different societies: if only all culture clashes involved theatrical miscegenation.

Dundee Rep
Tue 26 February - Sat 2 March at 7.30pm