An excellent cast, a fine historical comedy, but James IV: Queen of the Fight is somewhat lacking in the gravitas it seeks.
📍Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
📅Fri 30 Sept to Sat 8 Oct
🕖 Evenings: 7.30pm; Matinees, Thu & Sat: 2.30pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 2 hours 30 minutes (includes interval)
🗣️ Writer: Rona Munro
🎬 Director: Laurie Sansom
🎶 Composer: Paul Leonard-Morgan
🛠️ Designer: John Bausor
🎂 12+
🎭 Captioning: Thu 6 October 7.30PM; Audio Description, BSL Interpreted, Touch Tours: Sat 8 October
The fourth of Munro’s acclaimed James plays, Queen of the Fight, examines life at court under one of Scotland’s more competent (thus allege the historians) monarchs, James IV (Daniel Cahill). An overt enthusiast of education and the arts, James’s court abounded with poets and artisans, seemingly countenancing the social advancement of both women, and people of colour. Thus when two Moorish women of African descent were ‘forcefully invited’ to his court by Scottish privateers (Court endorsed pirates), at least one, but likely both, found a place amidst the Queens retinue.
Taking this sparse historical record, and a surviving poem from then court Makar, William Dunbar (Keith Fleming), Munro weaves her drama. In her telling, the Moorish pair, Lady Anne (Laura Lovemore), and attendant, Ellen (Danielle Jam), were intending to set up at the Court of Henry VIII, an accomplished team used to revolving in the royal circles of mainland Europe.
Brought instead to Scotland, the former quickly secures a place at the right hand of teenaged Queen Margaret (Sarita Gabony), leaving the latter to find a role amidst the court’s entertainers. In Ellen’s quick mind, and surpassing beauty, court Makar Dunbar finds both a friend, and a performer fit to re-ingratiate himself with the King. Despite a nervy start, she soon finds her voice, and thus the attentions of the King, and is made ‘Queen of the Fight’ — a role reserved for the court’s most beautiful lady — overseer and prize at the King’s spectacular, and theatrical combat tournaments.
The cast, from start to finish, are outstanding; the core trio of Jam, Lovemore, and Cahill each spectacular. There’s palpable chemistry in every interaction, and manifest joy in the delightfully comic wit abounding throughout the script. A welcome smattering of continental, and local languages certainly emphasises the cosmopolitan world of this long lost court, a tool deftly wielded to both comic, and tragic ends. Malcolm Cumming’s Malcolm, hostage heir to the conquered Lordship of the Isles, speaks only Gaelic, his dialogue unintelligible to most but the polyglot King who can’t ever seem to decide between execution, and adoption.
However, where James IV is undeniably successful as a Blackadder-esque tragi-comedy, it ultimately lacks the gravitas it pretends to.
The predictable love affair twixt Ellen and James benefits from bright moments of sparking chemistry, but having portrayed her as a person of no little intellect, Munro can hardly expect an audience to believe Ellen saw a future for herself as the King’s public paramour. Her inevitable fall is just that: inevitable. Though damaged, and human, Munro’s ‘Queen of the Fight’ doesn’t, however, evince such an appetite for self-destruction.
Further, there’s no doubt Dunbar’s poem, ‘Of Ane Blak-Moir‘ was, and is, a racist work of literature, motivated by jealousy, and an appeal to base elements. However when it finally emerges late into the second act, it arrives in isolation, a sudden bombshell of hateful ‘othering’ to mar the multicultural harmony witnessed otherwise. The spectacular reaction it provokes from its victim is worthy of a psychological action-thriller, and makes a convenient catastrophe to facilitate a tidy conclusion. Yes, such public humiliation must provoke a reaction, but desperate flight into the wilds is more fitting of a death threat, than an unlooked for blow to one’s dignity and prospects.
Nonetheless, director Laurie Sansom certainly squeezes the best from the script, never allowing proceedings to wallow, whilst always affording his cast room to shine. As 3 hour shows go, it’s a pacey, brisk, but un-rushed experience.
Visually, designer Bausor also keeps the staging simple, wrapping the action in a grand, if bare wooden amphitheatre. Resplendent hangings drop in & out, the main mechanism by which these timber bones are dressed as arena, stately bedroom, banquet hall or castle walls. It’s deft, simple, and effective work, providing the play with a stripped down elegance. The song-filled soundtrack from Paul Leonard-Morgan, enlivened by musician Gameli Tordzro certainly adds welcome texture to proceedings also. This production from Raw Material & Capital Theatres in association with National Theatre of Scotland, certainly isn’t lacking in material quality.
Fortunately Munro’s comic badinage continually evokes laughter for most of the play’s run-time, vanishing only when proceedings somewhat collapse in pursuit of an ending. At best the, dialogue absolutely sparkles, a wonderous collage of cultural sympathies and misunderstandings, class warfare, and a touch of slapstick. There’s no lack of social commentary couched between the chuckles, be it on the depredations of courtly politics, or the insecurity of royal favours. Accordingly, Lovemore’s Lady Anne enjoys the show’s most satisfactory arc, a model of self-belief and dignity, whose rise and fall from the Queen’s good races, is certainly exhausting & terrifying, but also a spur towards surprising, and compelling life choices.
In the final reckoning, though, James IV: Queen of the Fight is never quite fish, flesh, or good red herring. It’s not for lack of talent from any involved, it is simply a play trying to do too much at one time, and to be too many things to too many people. It’s a fine, and thought-provoking historical comedy, tacked to a somewhat contrived melodrama.
(All Photography Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic)
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