White Rose by Peter Arnott

Last time out, Firebrand toured Iron: a claustrophobic tale of parenting and criminality, it was give a sparse, effective rendering that emphasises the moral complexities of Rona Munro's script. Keeping with the theme of great, contemporary Scottish authors, Firebrand are following up with White Rose by Peter Arnott.


Although White Rose was a hit in its debut at the 1985 Edinburgh Festival, this is the first revival of the tale of female Russian World War II fighter ace Lily Litvak, the so-called ‘White Rose of Stalingrad’. Not only was she part of the USSR's heroic female pilot corps (thirty Citations of Hero of the Soviet Union went to women pilots, and three regiments of the Air Force were made up entirely of women), Litvak became a legend in her own right.

Firebrand’s director Richard Baron follows the tale of war in the sky and in the bedroom: White Rose offers an insight into the spirit of the warrior and the pull of patriotism. He also responded to my questions...

First of all, can I ask you a little about the company: you've been pretty busy lately, and are located outside of the usual locations. How did Firebrand come together, and how important is your "home" venue to the company's development?
Firebrand came together through a series of happy accidents: the actors Janet Coulson, Ellie Zeegen and I originally met in London but all ended up living in close proximity in the Scottish Borders. We found it an area rich in history and full of writers, artists and musicians but with little theatre going on. Having got some local businesses to sponsor us, we tested the water with a couple of productions at the 80 seat Wynd Theatre in Melrose and having been told we'd fill one night if we were lucky, managed to sell-out five performances each of David Mamet's Oleanna and David Greig's Being Norwegian.


This response convinced us that there was a Borders audience enthusiatic to see the sort of challenging plays we were excited by and we also saw that the work itself benefited from being produced in intimate theatre spaces. Having achieved Creative Scotland funding we now rehearse and open our shows in the 110 seat Tower Mill theatre, at the impressive Heart of Hawick arts complex, before touring across the breadth of southern Scotland and exporting our work to the Tron in Glasgow and Traverse in Edinburgh.


It was fantastic to be able to produce a weighty, rarely seen show like Iron in our home territory (sponsored by the new Scottish Borders Brewery and with a set built by local craftsmen), to attract an actor of the calibre of Blythe Duff to come and rehearse with us in Hawick and then to sell-out every performance both to our developing audience in the Borders and in the big city.


2. You've also gone for two pretty impressive scripts in the past two years. does this attention to classic scripts reflect a policy of the company?

Firebrand's simple guiding principle has been to seek-out plays that we think might work to advantage in an intimate space and to produce them to the highest possible standard: hence Oleanna, set in an office; Being Norwegian, a bed-sit; Iron, a claustrophobic prison. Other defining features are that they are all superbly written and intensely theatrical; they stir the mind and the emotions and provide great acting roles, particularly for women. 

We are also very interested in Scottish plays that have been unfairly neglected or are overdue a revival. As a director, for the most part I've worked with large casts in large spaces, from the Edinburgh Lyceum to Nottingham Playhouse, and with Firebrand it's been fascinating to reduce the palette a bit and concentrate in finer detail on the storytelling: the script and the actor and the relationship with a new and inquisitive audience, some of whom are new to theatre full stop. White Rose pushes all these buttons: it's beautifully written, takes on the epic battle of Stalingrad with a cast of three, has terrific acting roles (the original cast featured Tilda Swinton and Ken Stott), is seen from a female perspective and hasn't been revived since its debut in 1985.

When you stage something like White Rose, how far do you have contact with the author, Peter Arnott? Is he involved at all?

In researching White Rose I eventually hunted down two different typed versions of the script in Glasgow University's Scottish Theatre Archive and on contacting Peter learnt that despite its critical acclaim in 1985, the play had never been published. Peter has now sent me a revised version of what was his first play and has said: "I'm looking forward immensely to what an audience today makes of not just the conflict the play is about, but the atmosphere of conflict and optimism in which it was written. Can't wait."



This play hasn't been staged for a while... but is very well respected. How did you approach the interpretation of White Rose, and what inspired its selection?

I was intrigued by the fact that the play had had such a great reception in 1985, "Dazzlingly clever...unbearably moving" to quote The Guardian, had made Tilda Swinton's name and had been part of the most successful Edinburgh Festival season the Traverse had ever had and yet still had not been revived for 27 years!


I also really liked the idea that it was a Scottish play about Russian history (it tells the story of legendary World War 2 female fighter pilot Lily Litvak); bold and ambitious in its European style and outlook, taking on big themes about modern warfare and sexual politics but relating them to the intimate personal relationships of its three main characters: the brilliant, rebellious Lily, her friend and female mechanic Ina and her Squadron Commander and lover, Alexei.


I wanted to see if in our production we could achieve this marriage of the epic and the personal. I am very optimistic that with our cast of Alison O'Donnell, Lesley Harcourt and Robert Jack, and with the help of the set designer Edward Lipscomb and the theatre filmmaker Tim Reid, we have the right ingredients.


The themes in the play are timeless, but it is also located in a specific period of history. Does it have much to say to a contemporary audience, and how does your interpretation enhance this?

The play was written in the wake of the Falklands War, at the height of Thatcherism, the Greenham Common protests and the miner's strike and before the Berlin Wall was pulled down. What is fascinating is that its issues will now be seen through a different political and historical filter but I believe that its passion and commitment are visceral and its analysis of the politics of modern warfare and the battle of the sexes, seen from a female point of view, still has the power to engage and enrage.




Listings Information

Tower Mill, Heart of Hawick, Thursday 21 – Saturday 23 February 2013 7.30pm

Tickets: (preview) Thursday 21 February £10

Friday 22 & Saturday 23 February £12

Box Office: 01450 360688 www.heartofhawick.co.uk




Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Tuesday 26 February -Saturday 2 March 7.45pm
Tickets: Tuesday - Thursday £12/£7

Friday & Saturday £15/£12

Box Office: 0141 552 4267 www.tron.co.uk




Lochside Theatre, Castle Douglas, Sunday 3 March 7.30pm Tickets: £10/£8

Box Office: 01556 504506 www.lochsidetheatre.co.uk




Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, Wednesday 6 - Thursday 7 March 7.30pm

Tickets: £11.50 (£9.50) £6.50 under 18s

Box Office: 0131 665 2240 www.bruntontheatre.co.uk




Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, Friday 8 March 7.30pm

Tickets: £14, Friends of the Eastgate/Registered Disability/Carer £12, U16s £5

Box Office: 01721 725777 www.eastgatearts.com




The Wynd, Melrose, Sunday 10 - Tuesday 12 March 7.30pm

Tickets: £12

Box Office: 01750 725480 www.borderevents.com




Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 13 - Saturday 16 March 8.00pm
Matinee: Saturday 17 November 2.00pm

Tickets: £15/£11.50/£6

Box Office: 0131 228 1404 www.traverse.co.uk

Iron Heart

weak visual pun, artist Brian Murray

The pleasure of Rona Munro's Iron is not in the tight psychology of her quartet of characters, nor in the detail of prison life that she so precisely relates. It is in the central battle between mother and daughter, made more desperate and explicit by the extreme circumstances of their meeting (mum's a lifer, daughter's a success) and the ambiguity of both women's motivations.

Munro refuses the happy ending - prisoner Fay may have given her daughter a precious gift of freedom, and retains the one choice left to her - but draws a convincing portrait of a family conflict in extremis. Fay  is manipulative, cunning - Blythe Duff brings out her apparently psychopathic self interest in sly facial expressions - while daughter Josie is naive. Two prison guards watch and try to intervene, only for Fay to rescue her daughter from the trap she has carefully plotted.

It's the switches of mood that give Iron its force - at the interval, it is not clear whether Fay is an institutionalised victim or a master manipulator - and Munro toys with Josie's innocence. As Josie is drawn into her mother's plot - ultimately an attempt to provide at least something of the care she has been unable to give - her success is destroyed, she is morally compromised. The nurturing dynamic is replaced by a vicious, darker self-interest.

Munro's vision of parental care is bleak - the mother's her anger, impulsiveness and alienation corrupt her ambitions for her child, but ultimately redemptive. Fay's recognition of her bad influence may be sudden - coming somewhere in the final meeting - but it brilliantly undermines her confession of murder. Fay, having refused to discuss the circumstances that led to her conviction, reveals all: she accepts her guilt, rejects the chance to escape imprisonment and pushes away her daughter. And yet, by painting herself as the villain, she does right by her family.

Firebrand's production is taut, all four performers compelling and Munro's script given a sparse, exact reading. It's a chilling two hours: intelligent, emotive and challenging.

Iron in the Soul

I have frequently, usually after drinking too much in the Tron bar, made assertions that the script is painfully out of date. Not any particular script - just the very idea of using words, written down on the page in advance, as a foundation for performance. I am sure that these words have struck terror into the hearts of authors, because they seem to be taking great delight in proving me wrong. There is a whole generation of playwrights - some of whom might not recognise the title - who are not only reviving the script but making  Scotland look cool on the international scene.

Rona Munro, however, was making my claims a nonsense before I even knew what devised theatre was. Iron, currently touring Scotland, was originally a success in 2002 and this version, directed by Richard Baron, comes from Firebrand - another company coming from beyond the central belt and a reminder of how vital Scottish theatre is just now. 

Iron uses a nice, simple set-up - a mother is visited in prison by her daughter - to examine the tense relationship between parent and child. The script - which is available on line, so I have actually read it - is good on the detail of prison life, but this isn't so much a procedural drama, like the ones that HBO are so good at promoting. 

"I think it is definitely the mother daughter relationship that is the dramatic engine in the play," Munro agrees.  "And is probably the key to its success in many different countries and different cultural contexts. I did do a lot of research into life inside but, at the end of the day, you can probably only write what you know from your own experience, I can only observe what it's like to be in prison or visiting prison, but I do know what it's like to be a mother and I do know what it's like to be a daughter."

Munro has been impressing audiences since the 1980s - she even wrote a serialisation of Doctor Who, which is not the sort of thing expected from a writer who has had a major NTS production at The Edinburgh International Festival. But unless wikipedia has got it wrong again, and my research is exposed as lazy, Munro has found international acclaim. Iron has been translated and transferred around the world. Munro does see a continuity in the productions. "What's been startling seeing different productions around the world is how similar they seem to be, though, of course, if I'm watching it in Japanese or German there are probably lots of subtleties I miss completely."

Starring Blythe Duff out of Taggart, who has recently been making a conscious effort to return to the stage, Firebrand's production is ideal for the ambition of  the company to remind the Borders that theatre is not only accessible but enjoyable: Munro's script is tough and honest, Duff is a star name and the theme of familial love and tension is something that performance is well suited to examine. Munro herself is notable for her ability to create something that, historically, playwrights have missed: the strong female character.

"It comes back to writing what you know best: obviously I'll be more comfortable with a female perspective. My own politics, especially as my formative years were in that battling decade, the 1980s, would always incline me to favour those voices that are under represented in our culture. However it's a no brainer really, if you concentrate on narratives that have not often been told you are always telling fresh, surprising stories, and that's gold."