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I have frequently, usually after drinking too much in the Tron bar, made assertions that the script is painfully out of date.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."