Bringing iconic book to the stage
Dundee Rep, until May 2; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, May 8-11; Eden Court, Inverness, May 16-18; Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, May 28-June 8
Sunset Song is often regarded as Scotland’s favourite book and one of its biggest fans is respected playwright Morna Young. She grew up with Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s coming-of-age novel and has returned to it many times over the years. It brought her comfort during lockdown, when she wrote a monologue about the story for the Scots Language Centre, and that sparked a desire to write a stage adaptation.
Fate intervened when she took a call soon after from Dundee Rep’s Andrew Panton, who asked her if she would be interested in adapting Sunset Song.
“It was beautiful timing,” smiled Morna, whose previous works include the acclaimed Lost At Sea and the Runrig musical The Stamping Ground. “Sunset Song is a book I first read in school, like many people. Apart from struggling with the prelude, I loved it. “I was amazed at the time as to how a man in 1932 could capture this female experience that echoed a lot of what I was thinking about at the time – being a teenager in the north east, speaking Doric at home and English at school, leaving home.
“When it came to adapting it, the ‘why me’ was easy – I’m a woman from the north east and the story has been with me all my life. The ‘why now’ was more complicated, as there’s been so many adaptations and it’s so loved by so many people. But I hadn’t seen a stage adaptation written by a woman before, so what I’m bringing to this is a long overdue female lens on Chris Guthrie.” Chris Guthrie is, of course, the protagonist of Sunset Song. Beginning in 1911 and moving through the First World War, it follows her as she faces tough life choices while navigating adulthood in harsh times.
After conversations with director Finn den Hertog and composer Finn Anderson, it was decided to present the early 20th century action with a contemporary hand.
“While the story is set in 1911 and goes through the war, we’re telling the story in 2024, so that changes how we view things like Chris’ trauma, and the sequence of events she lives through and how each event stays with her and haunts her,” Morna explained. “That’s different to look at through the 2024 lens rather than go all the way back. A lot of that is about the treatment of women and what can I bring as a female writer, and I think that’s slightly different.”
Playing Chris Guthrie is Danielle Jam, whose previous stage credits include Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning, James IV: Queen Of The Fight and Kidnapped.
Morna said: “So much about Sunset Song is finding your Chris and when Finn and I sat down to talk about it, I said I had someone in mind, and so did he, and we both said Danielle, so that was another moment when I knew we were on the same page. “It’s such a demanding part, and the fact that Chris begins as a schoolgirl and goes all the way through losing her parents, meeting Ewan, getting married and having a child, it’s a real sweep of time.
“Danielle is such an intelligent and emotional actress and I think she’s sensational; you can see her transform from a young spirit to someone who has lived. It’s incredible.”
Morna hopes her version of Sunset Song is well received, as she would love to adapt the other two books in the trilogy, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite.
“That would be my dream ambition,” she added. “The politics in them could be written about now. It blows my mind reading them again. Is it that we’re caught in a cycle of history or was Lewis so far ahead of his time? There’s a lot of amazing material in them.”
As each girl grapples with what happened in the war, they begin to imagine what lies ahead of them in peacetime. A Schiaparelli gown, suitors and bacon rations are all bartered with in this lively and moving stage adaption of Spark’s seminal novel.