Sunset Song at Dundee Rep – review

If you haven’t done any of your education in Scotland, then it’s difficult to grasp just how deeply significant and widely loved Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel Sunset Song is. Set in the Mearns near Scotland’s north-east coast, it tells the story of Chris Guthrie, a girl with a deep affinity for the land growing up on a farm by the small village of Kinraddie.

Much of the novel’s popularity comes from things that we can recognise, such as the fact that it’s in part a coming-of-age story. We follow Chris from childhood into adulthood and parenthood, and we empathise with her growing pains while feeling shocked at the rawness of her tough rural life, particularly her unflinching father. It’s partly, also, because the novel is a snapshot of a particular time: Chris comes to adulthood while Britain is on the brink of the First World War, and the novel mirrors the journey from innocence to experience in Chris, her community and the nation as a whole, ending as a war memorial is set up to the Kinraddie men who died in the conflict.

What really endears it to Scots, however, is the centrality of the land. Chris is a child of nature who finds comfort in it and runs from her problems into the open air, saying repeatedly that “nothing endures but the land.” Morna Young’s new adaptation of the novel for the Dundee Rep and the Edinburgh Lyceum understands that, and puts the land literally at its centre. The action is played out on four large pits of soil in the centre of the stage. The actors tramp, stamp, fall and kick through it throughout the action, picking it up and flicking it around in a way that almost makes it an extra character, connecting it with them and us in a manner that manages to become much more than just a powerful gesture.

Director Finn den Hertog and musician Finn Anderson intensify this connection with the earth through music, dance, ritual and a sense of mythology as the characters seem to emerge from it and inhabit it. Hertog’s vivid direction and Young’s economical script come together to produce something close to magic as it brings the story to life through short scenes and vivid language, including extensive Doric, the Scots dialect of the northeast. Like Chris, Young is also a woman from Scotland’s northeast and she writes in the programme of how she shared the protagonist’s duality growing up. Maybe that’s what helps her to reach so deeply into Chris’ character.

The performances are terrific, led by Danielle Jam as Chris herself. She traces with uncanny believability her journey from innocent child full of hope to disillusioned, world-weary adult, but she is surrounded by a wonderful ensemble, all of whom play more than one character but do so with total clarity through nothing more than a different stance or a change of voice. Ali Craig brings fearful weight to Chris’ overbearing father but still manages to retain a shred of sympathy for him, while Rori Hawthorn is almost unbearable as Chris’ tragic mother. As Chris’ husband, Murray Fraser brings humanity and edge to both sides of Ewan’s character, and Samuel Pashby is both likeable as Long Rob and nauseating as Auntie Janet.

At times it isn’t an easy watch, with scenes of sexual violence that are sensitively handled but nonetheless difficult. However, it’s completely involving and, even though it’s nearly three hours long, it feels like there’s barely a moment wasted. In short, it’s a triumph, to be sought out whether you know the novel or not.