A darkish stage is lapped by flickering candles. Right here, 4 actors current six characters and, briefly, a refrain that introduces the motion: the date is 1528; Scotland is a rustic with “One god, one church, one pope… Till, in the future, it isn’t.”
James V: Katherine is the fifth of Rona Munro’s sequence of “James performs” set in the course of the reigns of kings of Scotland. Her ambition is, the playwright says in a programme observe, “to make invisible Scottish historical past seen”. On this occasion, by inserting a fictional queer love story centre stage and displaying how non secular puritanism “might need affected ladies and closed the door on any risk of queer tolerance”. In a play that feels extra like a piece in progress than a completed drama, these points are touched on however don’t pulse the center of the motion.
The fulcrum of the piece is Katherine’s brother, Patrick Hamilton (Benjamin Osugo), the primary Scottish Protestant martyr. We meet the siblings on the day of Patrick’s marriage ceremony (to Katherine’s childhood sweetheart, Jenny). Patrick’s elliptical references to his impending destiny cross by the sensible Katherine (Catriona Faint), one thing she bitterly regrets after she learns that he took six hours to burn on the stake, preaching till his final breath (an occasion gruesomely narrated by Sean Connor’s couthy constable).
Munro’s Katherine decides to defend Patrick’s religion in honour of his reminiscence, not by her personal private conviction. She defies the constable, is arrested and tried. A reducing riposte to her Catholic accuser (mirror-imaging Patrick’s monovision and likewise performed by Osugo) results in a personal dialog with James V (Connor); after which, Katherine recants. That is the occasion for which the historic Katherine is remembered. In Munro’s fiction, an emotional intervention by Jenny (Alyth Ross), pleading for love over ideology, is the essential issue that precipitates change.
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Uneven writing, coupled with unsubtle path (Orla O’Loughlin), leaves the promise of Munro’s fascinating premise unfulfilled.
On press evening, the efficiency was halted for a half hour or so and the auditorium emptied after a member of the viewers was taken in poor health. Theatre employees managed the scenario promptly and successfully. The corporate responded with admirable professionalism. Greeted with cheers and applause by the viewers, as soon as our relative positions have been resumed, the actors snapped again into the scene with, if something, extra assurance than earlier than.
