The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Tensions rise as hot tubs bubble in the Highlands
PERFECT alchemy. That’s what you are after when you attempt a musical theatre production which blends a fresh story with hugely popular music. Sometimes it works. Abba’s Mamma Mia! and The Proclaimers’ Sunshine on Leith or Green Day’s American Idiot are clear examples. However, there’s no guarantee that great music and words will come together in theatre harmony.
Thankfully, The Stamping Ground, which features the songs of Highland rock legends Runrig, manages to pull off exactly that challenge.
But first the storyline. Playwright Morna Young has conceived a tale of a young family who return to the remote Scottish village of Glenbeg, increasing the population from 105 to 108.
The parents, Euan and Annie, are a together-forever couple who have come back to their home village seeking a fresh start for their teenage daughter. Fiona, we learn, has been severely bullied at school in London.
However, when the family return to the Highlands, they soon find themselves lost in this once familiar place, now filled with more tourists than residents.
There is little doubt that the world they once knew has changed. The once sleepy hollow has woken up to rapid modernity.
“There are more hot tubs than sheep dips” – and it’s now a place where the residents “put on their friendliest smiles in summer – then wonder how they’ll ever get through winter”.
Fiona, meanwhile, comes to idolise effervescent local tour guide Summer, whose influence her nostalgic dad comes to resent, especially when he finds out about Summer’s link to his father’s death.
This storyline certainly doesn’t offer a sanitised version of the Highlands, instead portraying an economy that is moving from rural trade to tourism. We learn that the heart of their community, the local pub, is for sale and tensions are rising; a neat parallel with the Clearances, with one local declaring that the economic struggle is in itself “a form of eviction”.
As relationships ignite and smoulder, Euan and Annie find themselves swept into a battle to save the heart of the community. But can they save each other? They have their own relationship problems to contend with.
Just to add colour to the story, driven neatly by attempts to understand what we mean by the concept of “home”, we learn that Euan is a writer of bodiceripping historical novels which appeal to a fan base of expat readers.
For some reason, these readers manage to see romance in the Highland Clearances rather than the horror.
But of course, when you are writing of a period in history it pays to have a musical catalogue of songs that suggest passion and nostalgia, and which are evocative and political.
This is where Runrig delivers.
The music of the band, all heartswirling melodies and heaving bass lines, is near perfect for the shifting
tones of the storyline, marrying itself to themes of community and love and loss.
But now those Runrig songs have undergone a quite incredible adaptation by musical director John Kielty.
Luke Kernaghan’s direction certainly offers real comparisons with Scotland’s other big artistbased musical, the acclaimed Sunshine on Leith.
The Stamping Ground allows for real upbeat humour combined with an understanding of the nature of change in communities, and how that change can shake and shape personal lives.
The cast includes stage icon and River City star Juliet Cadzow, Jenny Hulse (also of River City), Ali Watt (a regular performer with Pitlochry Festival Theatre), Caitlin Forbes, Annie Grace, Robert Grose, Barrie Hunter and Brian James O’Sullivan.