In Time o’ Strife strikes a strong red note in this latest production from the National Theatre of Scotland.
This rumbustious ensemble piece is based on the 1926 play by Fife miner turned playwright and poet, Joe Corrie. He wrote it and other plays while on strike to help raise funds for the soup kitchens operating to stave off hunger in the families of striking fellow miners.
The play toured and was performed successfully by a group put together by Corrie called the Bowhill Players, later to become the Fife Miner Players. In spite of his work bearing comparisons to Lorca, Zola, Lawrence and O’Casey, it was shunned by the Scottish theatrical establishment of the time. Its last professional production was in 1982 by the 7.84 theatre company in the Glasgow Citizen’s.
Director Graham McLaren has adapted Corrie’s original work by interweaving parts of other Corrie plays and updating it with live original music from Michael John McCarthy that has been set to several of Corrie’s poems.Corrie’s original use of Scots has been retained in the dialogue.
The play is set in the last part of the long strike of 1926, when miners had downed tools to strike for fairer working conditions. The human endeavour of trying to survive on thin air and the odd Parish hand out is at the heart of this piece of Scottish agitprop. Through the eyes of two families, the dilemma of whether to strike or be a scab splits loyalties and creates heartbreak and disillusionment both personally and politically.
The audience walks in to the full swing of a foot tapping village hop that gives a sense of something wild and exciting ahead. However, the format of live music interspersed with didactic drama that worked so well for 7:84 and Wildcat somehow did not feel properly glued. There is a bit of a sense of ‘let’s do the show right here’ that sat ill.
The venue of the Pathhead Hall in Kirkaldy was on one hand completely right but some of the dance moves looked constrained by the smallness of the stage area maybe because some of these moves looked a bit too show bizzy for this genre. The physically wrenching solo dance by Tom McGovern is more in keeping as is the stomping ensemble dance at the start that has hints of the unison of Scottish step.
Characters seemed to appear incongruously, again perhaps because of the limitations of the stage but the result was a lack of credibility in the staging.
Some of the costumes and hairstyles were anachronistic though the miners’ donkey jackets with reflective shoulders may be to show the fact that conditions did not greatly change for miners who continued to face decades of struggles as emphasised by voice overs by Thatcher in the ‘80s.
The child who created a poignant presence was unfortunately dressed like a middle class pastiche of poverty, instead of the garb of the mid-1920s. The play had a disjointed feel that is maybe a result of the interweaving of other plays to create the revival but overall some of the dance styles did not marry with the seriousness of the play’s message. There were a few bitterly comic moments as Jenny’s badly played fiddle went back and forth to the pawn shop as often as its bow was meant to be sweeping its strings.
Corrie’s writing and his capacity to shift from the role of a manual worker to that of a respected writer of poems, plays and political tracts is testament to the model of a Scottish education system and ideals of the time. The play’s revival is laudable, heartening and important in terms of Scottish culture but the message sadly feels like whistling in the wind in today’s climate of indistinguishable political rhetoric and lack of visible solidarity.
The final chant of by Corrie’s powerful and politically charged poem, I am the Common Man, followed by a rendition of The Red Flag is a fitting end to this tribute to working class life if a stark reminder of its currently diminished collective power.
Show times
Wednesday 2nd – Saturday 12th October at 7.30pm;
Saturday 5th, Wednesday 9th, Saturday 12th October at 2.30pm matinees
All tickets £9
performances: £14 (£11 concessions)
age guide of 12 +
Pathhead Hall, Commercial St. (corner of Broad Wynd), Kirkcaldy, Fife, KY1 2Q
01592 583302 online booking: www.onfife.com