A Game Of Death And Chance

Gladstone’s Land, Edinburgh

Ifyouvisitanationaltrustfor Scotland property, you won’t be surprised to find someone in period costume chatting about life as it used to be lived. Soitisinagameofdeathand Chance,playingseveraltimesa dayinthebedroomsanddrawing rooms of Gladstone’s Land, but in the hands of Grid Iron director Ben Harrison, you get a better class of historical reenactment.

His theme is the turbulence of 17th-century Scotland, a period when religious ferment and failed colonial enterprise were followed by the Act of Union of 1707. At the top of a spiral staircase, a friendly and forthright Mary Gapinski welcomes us into her topfloor room where, as Lucky Lucy, she works as a minister’s maid. Jumping back and forth across the decades, she talks about Catholic-protestant conflict and the plague of 1645. Cue David Paul Jones making a baroque appearance as Deith, complete with death mask and cloak, singing about miasma and pointing a chilling finger at fatalities to come.

Thesequenceofmonologues continues with Mark Kydd as an enthusiastic Somerville, treating us as investors in Scotland’s ill-fated Darien scheme. In the next room we find Wendy Seager lying on the bedasanexhaustedcaledonia, representing a nation defeated by circumstance, before Kevin Lennon’s bumptious Daniel Defoe attempts to charm us with the joys of North Britain.

The fact-heavy script is more illustrated lecture than fullblown drama, but it’s slickly put together and the performances are vigorous and engaging.

MARK FISHER

Until 8 September