This Restless Critic

 Photo by Tim Morozzo

This Restless House isn't quite the wholesale feminist revision of The Oresteia that I might have fantasised. Zinnie Harris does a cheeky gender-swap (Orestes loses his place as the matricide to Electra) and allows Clytemnestra a more sympathetic character - helped by Pauline Knowles powerful performance. But Harris is too skilful a playwright to be blatantly ideological. It does stand as 'feminist theatre', if I must, but refuses to condemn the source trilogy explicitly.

Aeschylus' Oresteia is a rare text, managing to be really really good and shamelessly promoting an ideology. It might as well have had the subtitle The Triumph of Patriarchy. Not only does it present a state in a state, because a woman is in charge, it has a lovely denouement, in which the latest ancient Greek science reveals that mothers are not blood relatives to their children. Every so often, somebody claims that the patriarchy started with Christianity or Judaism. When I have finished shouting at them, I suggest that they learn classical Greek. 

Any contemporary interpretation has to deal with the gender politics. It's not enough to sigh that times were different then: The Oresteia offers an argument for male dominance. Even if Agamemnon turns out to be deceitful - for Harris, he gives it all the uxorious loyalty while banging a slave-girl behind Clytemnestra's back - he remains the true king. When he gets stabbed up (the worst scene in Restless House, since it ignores the Greek dictum that violence ought to happen off-stage), it's not domestic violence, but an attack on the notion of kingship.

The brilliance of This Restless House is in the final play (Electra and her Shadow). Having acted out the first and second parts in a mythical time and place that is partially ancient Greece and partially Glasgow, Harris slaps Electra into a psychiatric ward. The image of a woman captured by her past, and banged up in the straps for it, lends relevance and immediacy. Electra becomes the madwoman stuck with the bloody curse of patriarchy, and punished for her rebellion.

By killing her father - and this is a superb switch, akin to that time Euripides made Medea a child-killer (the earlier versions of her myth have the citizens of Corinth doing her kids) - Electra both accepts the obligations of ancient patriarchy and disrupts it. She might be doing the right thing, but a woman taking control: naughty.

In the person of the male psychiatrist, who ultimately holds power over Electra and her shadow (a female former patient turned rising star psychiatrist), Harris pictures soft male power. Insinuating, full of surface compassion, he goads the shadow into insanity, and makes sure that Electra remains 'untreatable'. 

Harris is smart enough (unlike me) to know that an obvious shift from male power to female power won't cut it. Instead, she exposes the bleak oppression that continues, the change in power from priests to doctors and the enervating revelation that the more things change, the more they stay the same... 

Women in Theatre

Mugstock: The Garden: Korean Architecture

MugStock will offer a unique blend of live entertainment and activities such as pond dipping, castle tours, guided walks, woodland rambles, survival, storytelling, mountain biking, willow weaving and archery.

Mugdock Country Park Joint Management Committee is hugely supportive of the project.

Councillor Eric Gotts, Chair of the Committee, said, "We are very pleased that the organisers have chosen the wonderful surrounds of Mugdock to host this very special event.

"It's an exciting idea and has the potential to offer increased visitor numbers to the park, new audiences and a fresh way to enjoy one of Scotland's finest natural attractions."

Mugdock currently receives over 600,000 visitors each year and hopes are high that more visitors will be attracted from Glasgow, Stirling and beyond.

Alan Govan, who conceived the idea five years ago while visiting the park with his wife, added, "MugStock is a not-for-profit festival and we are all working on a voluntary basis, so our hearts are really in it to create an event which showcases the park itself while being something special for festival-goers."

Organisers expect 2,000 campers to attend the inaugural event on 7th - 9th August and are optimistic about launching with an Indie GoGo campaign next month.

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.

Miss Julie @ The Citizens

I tend not to know about such things -  I'm no TV, all theatre - but Dominic Hill's direction of Zinnie Harris' version of Miss Julie has got one of the stars of BBC's Sherlock in it. I do know that Harris relocates Strindberg's classic tale to 1920s Scotland, right in the middle of a strike against Miss Julie's capitalist father, and that it doesn't end well: the social and sexual tension between Julie and her dad's man-servant leads to fantastic dreams that end in a nightmare.

Press release begins:

Star of the BBC’s Sherlock Louise Brealey makes her debut on the Citizens Theatre stage .Prior to appearing in the Gorbals in the title role, Louise Brealey will be part of the nation’s festive viewing schedule when she stars as Molly in the eagerly-awaited third series of the BBC’s hit TV show Sherlock on New Year’s Day. Brealey has also played long-standing character Nurse Roxy Bird in the BBC’s Casualty and has appeared at the Bush Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre, the Young Vic and Bristol Old Vic.

Citizens Theatre Artistic Director Dominic Hill directs Zinnie Harris’ 2005 adaptation of August Strindberg’s thrilling tale of an upstairs-downstairs liaison, relocated to 1920s Scotland when the economic toll of the First World War was being felt, and the working classes were striking against falling wages and the privileges of the upper classes. 

Joining Brealy on stage will be Scottish actor Keith Fleming, who recently won praise as Macbeth in a new co-production by Horsecross Arts and Tron Theatre Company, and who starred in Dominic Hill’s award-winning Peer Gynt in 2007. Completing the cast is Citizens Theatre Actor Intern Jessica Hardwick, who appeared on the Citizens’ stage as Sonya in Hill’s 2013 production of Crime and Punishment.

Set in the oppressive heat of summer, Miss Julie follows the dangerous flirtatious games played by Julie and her father’s butler, John. As the night wears on, the couple from opposite ends of the social spectrum tease and fight towards an explosive conclusion. 

Harris’ version of the European classic, first created for National Theatre of Scotland, looks at the politics of the play through a new prism, setting the power-games played by Julie and John against a backdrop of wider social unrest. Harris has written extensively for theatre and television including the acclaimed The Wheel, Further than the Furthest Thing, Midwinter, Fall and the BBC’s Spooks.

Director Dominic Hill said: “This is a play about sexual politics: the battle of the sexes, sexual desire and the way men and women negotiate and manipulate to get what they want. For me, this is what makes the play truly timeless. I’m pleased that we’ll be presenting this landmark text on the Citizens’ main stage for the first time.”

Strindberg’s play defined a new naturalism in theatre when it was first premiered in 1888, with its shocking realism leading to it being censored. Since then, the universal nature of the themes contained in the play has lent the gripping story to a variety of settings, from the sectarianism of 19^th-century Northern Ireland to the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  A major film version directed by Liv Ullmann and starring Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton is scheduled for a 2014 release.

  

Citizens Theatre presents
Strindberg’s
MISS JULIEA new version by Zinnie Harris
Directed by Dominic Hill
Designed by Neil Haynes
Lighting Design by Stuart Jenkins
Cast: Louise Brealey, Keith Fleming, Jessica Hardwick (Citizens Theatre Actor Intern)

Dates: Thu 6 – Sat 15 Feb, 7.30pm (no performances Sundays & Mondays)

Events:
Post show discussion and Q&A with Director Dominic Hill
Tue 11 Feb

Schools Workshop Miss Julie: Inside the Rehearsal Room
Wed 12 Feb, 5.00pm – 6.30pm (followed by show at 7.30pm)
A practical insight into the making of this production led by the Assistant Director. Supports writing about ‘a play seen in production’ for Higher and Advanced Higher Drama pupils.
To book contact Louise Brown 0141 418 6273 / louisebrown@citz.co.uk

Miss Julie: An Afternoon with Strindberg
Sat 15 Feb, 12.15pm (followed by show at 2.30pm)
Tickets £10 + ticket to the show. Price includes buffet lunch and refreshments. Tickets to the show sold separately.
Director Dominic Hill in discussion with playwright Zinnie Harris and academic of Scandinavian literature Peter Graves.