A nuanced tale makes much of Runrig’s storytelling-rich catalogue, but The Stamping Ground could use more oomph.
📍 Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 Wed 23 to 27 May 2023
🕖 Evenings 7.30pm | Matinees 2.30pm
🕖 Running time: Approx 2 hours 30 minutes (with one interval)
✏️Writer: Morna Young
❕Concept: Alan B McCleod
🎬 Director: Luke Kernaghan
🎼 Musical Director and Arranger: John Kielty
🛠️ Designer: Kenneth Macleod
🕺 Movement Director: Jade Adamson
💡 Lighting Designer: Simon Wilkinson
🔊 Sound Designer: Garry Boyle
👨🎤 FEATURING THE SONGS OF RUNRIG
🎂 12+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Audio Induction Loop
The Stamping Ground, one of a continuing wave of new Scottish, and Scotland-based musicals, confirms its staying power with a 2023 tour to follow its 2022 premiere. In taking the music of the much loved Runrig as the basis for a peculiarly Scottish soundtrack, it also joins the ever-growing fraternity of Jukebox musicals. It’s rather good, but The QR (surprise, surprise) has some opinions to share.
Fittingly for a story told to the music of a band pre-occupied with its homeland, The Stamping Ground follows Euan (Ali Watt), wife Annie (Jenny Hulse) and daughter Fiona (Caitlin Forbes) on their return to Glenbeag, their homeland in the highlands. Seeking safety, and familiarity in which to bring up their previously bullied offspring, they instead find a dwindling community under threat from untempered tourism.
In taking Runrig for a muse, originator Alan B Macleod offers the creative team a peculiar inverse of the usual Jukebox paradigm. In place of a slew of iconic, charting hits as in The Cher Show or Jersey Boys, they are instead presented with an extensive back catalogue of critically regarded, culturally-rich numbers prone to better sales in Denmark than the UK. John Kietly, thus freed from ubiquitous expectations to reproduce a well-kent studio sound, takes the story-rich discography to create a folk musical pitched someplace between Shetland and the West End.
Melodic opening number, ‘Going Home’, for example, is only shifted a little from it’s country-edged origins to make a suitably wistful curtain raiser. ‘All Things Must Change’ becomes a natural theme for Euan and Annie’s relationship, slowed and expanded to make a ballad for two. However, it’s when Barry Hunter’s community elder Donnie (entirely coincidental I’m sure) takes up ‘Dance called America’ to tell of the Scottish diaspora, that the hairs on the back of the neck really perk up.
The on-stage band, let by Kielty do a fine job, supported by the many intrumentalists in the cast. Garry Boyle certainly creates a rich, well-balanced soundscape. For all the excellent clarity in word and song, however, there’s not enough power. When breaking out into title song ‘The Stamping Ground’, I want to feel the theatre buzz with heavy bass, need to feel the talented cast in choir reaching the rafters. If the creators of Beautiful, the Carole King musical, can do that with a singer-songwriter’s catalogue, then it should be a no-brainer with a Celtic Rock band’s material.
On the other hand, Morna Young’s book offers a more nuanced story than say, Mamma Mia, setting a familial breakdown against a background of the rural housing & economy crisis. Ali Watt exhibits a fine voice as the under-pressure patriarch, whilst Forbes turns in a eye-catching performance as the frustrated teenager seeking escape from his overweening concern. Yet it’s the supporting cast that steal the show, not least in some sparkling repartee between Euan’s mum Mary (Annie Grace) and best friend Maggie (Juliet Cadzow); but most of all in free-spirited Summer (Naomi Stirrat). Stirrat, folk singer with Celtic Worship, combines vocal power with humour and sensitivity to embody this beleaguered but undefeated spirit of highland persistence.
However, though tourists are spoken of regularly, they feature relatively little in the action. Returning son of Glenbeag made rich, Johnny (Robert Grose) is the only avatar of this supplanting force – when not busy romancing old flame Mary. Their nemesis thus being more spoken of than shown, our heroes noble resistance, and fine words can sometimes feel a little contrived. Far more successful is the sense of a living, breathing community/resistance, the local pub the last bastion and their barricade against the incomers.
Aiding this sense of place is Kenneth Macleod’s cleverly constructed set, a study in circles, the first a raised wooden dais, the second a runic-inscribed menir standing behind. Don’t expect mountainous backdrops, this is the highlands wrought in abstract, and imbued with a feeling of permanence. One curved section peels away to create a recongisable bar, whilst a single gap in the stone makes a doorway to wherever the action demands.
Runrig’s final gift to the show comes at the curtain call with their iconic take on ‘Loch Lomond’. So expect to be taking the high road off into the streets thereafter.
The Stamping Ground plays the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh from Tue 23 to Sat 27 May 2023. It is a Raw Material and Eden Court co-production. This production is funded by Creative Scotland
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