48 Logie Place, Aberdeen, 26 February 2006

Aberdeen's production of the National Theatre of Scotland's HOME. (Photo: Dominic Ibbotson)

I FILLED my diesel tank with petrol, but my attempt at a runner to catch the ‘Home’ productions of Inverness, Caithness and Aberdeen suffered a hicup. The AA man thought he could save me money by towing me over Culloden moor to a rural garage.

I was still stung for draining the tank, but met the young daughter of the proprietor. She fetched rich-tea biscuits and found a Charlie Chaplin video for me to watch in the reception area. Her mother did the bookwork. It was homely, soothing after a rush, till the bill hit.

Mobile again, I drove past standing stones and signposts, directing you towards the battlefield. I thought of the Peter Watkins’ film, televised in the 60s, when clansmen or redcoats spoke directly to the camera, listing their homeland, their property, their terms of duty. Why they were assembled on a bleak field, on the date in question, most of them far from where they live.

So it was back to the mission. I’ve seen the home game in Stornoway. Now I’m chasing the mainland events. I arrive just in time outside the Arts In Motion Nissen-hut in Evanton. Scott Graham, the artistic director of Frantic Assembly, has set up a dialogue with some local families.

We meet them briefly, as arranged groupings of individuals, silhouette images, as we are led through the space. In fact we are sometimes pushed around a bit, steered so that our own groupings are part of the arrangement.

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None of these productions could be called small-scale, Stornoway’s doll’s house included, but Aberdeen’s is massive in its themes.

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The next hour is a fast-paced progression through sectors of the building as the six performers attempt to build a household of interlocking relationships. Young folk doing their best to make links. Choreography is supplemented with spare dialogue. They could be in Alness or Southampton as they struggle to create a home.

I feel for them and think of my first years at Uni; my sons settling into flats. The dance of interlocking lives and limbs reminded me both of images of speeded-up sleep and Andy Warhol’s long slow film of his lover asleep. Hypnotic, strange and very familiar.

Use of the spaces within the building is outstanding. Seizing chances like the exterior door opening to the revving car, backing up to speed away as one of the household goes storming out. And as we head for our own exits, we see projections of the real life family images which prompted all that imagery.

Another day, another county. Mathew Lenton has taken the community involvement further, identifying skills in both music and acting, to draft into his army. It’s Saturday night. There’s a reception with Vicky Featherstone explaining how she was convinced by George Gunn that Wick was a must for one of the venues.

Then we’re brought into the disused glass factory. This week it’s a nursing home, but one that could well be inside a set from ‘Apocalypse Now’. We start with Joan Meyrick’s compulsive attempt to mop up seepage from a wardrobe. We’ll come back to that, but only after a surreal journey driven by a live orchestra and an inspiring, intensely moving expression of the mind of a woman whose inner world is so much more powerful than anything outside her head.

Moments of profound sadness are achieved but develop into an affirmative slant which keeps people gathered and gabbing in a cold shed. Myra McFadyen’s powerful central performance provides a link with a strong line of Scottish theatre. Existing strengths are well-served by this encounter with an innovative director.

In Mackay’s Hotel it’s clear from the craic and the tunes that the visiting professionals have bonded with the locally based performers and crew. Maybe this scene is being echoed at the strategic locations through our country.

It’s a late night and an early morning but we’re on the bus from downtown Aberdeen to a less fashionable housing estate. The show has started already with a stand-up tour of Aberdeen’s leitmotifs from Byron to the 1960s typhoid epidemic, by Pat Woods.

Then, as in the Evanton production, we are met by an estate agent and his speil is interrupted by the uninvited disturbance of noisy lives. The man in the sharp suit – the charismatic Aberdeen based actor,
Eddie York – is heckled by a homeless couple who are reluctantly taken along for the group-viewing of six flats at 48 Logie Place.

This promenade form invites the taking of risks – as all the rooms are in one structure, there is a guarantee of some degree of shape. Though this seems to be a real house, there’s a clear parallel with the room by room arrangement of Stewart Laing’s piece in Stornoway.

Alison Peebles’s work, designed for the Aberdeen site, with Martin McNee and Ursula Cleary and written by Rona Munro, is already up front as performance. And we’re only in the hall.

A monologue from an old woman on the phone opens. All too soon, another from a landlocked fisher, will draw us near the close. Two lonely people. We read between the lines of the first and are driven by the poetry of the last. Eva Cowie, drafted in from a local drama group, delivers a subtle portrait of a generous soul, seeking a meeting with the saleswoman’s voice on the phone. “But are you no goin; to come round?” There is the shadow of a distant daughter.

We sense the stink of pigeon shit and the stink of old fish. Between them we meet the traveled northeast lad (made vital by Billy Riddoch) returning to a farm that’s had to function without him. Then there’s a young woman, desperate to make a proper meal, against all resistance from those she wants to get around a table. And a couple separated by the North Sea, so that home has really become the mess-room or the kitchen, somehow easier in the absence of the other.

The homeless still accompany us on the viewing. They go from room to room and they are present in the asides and jokes of our chameleon guide. We go by a kitchen dance or a bedroom game or the small signs on each door – Home Is Where The Heart Is; Home Cooking; Homing Pigeon; Home From The Sea – all chapter titles in the book of home.

Brecht’s ghost is still among us. So is John McGrath’s. The achievment of the Communicado company, joint-founded by Peebles. But we’re experiencing a challenging yet entertaining new work. Its success depends more on vision than technology. The rise and fall of emotions we have encountered within these shabby walls have provided the true shape.

So our viewing is complete. We are led back down towards the door to the outside world. Then a bizarre choir of all these characters builds and builds to produce opera on the stairwell. Hints of remembered melodies ring in your ears as you exit. Then you catch the snatch of the same song, distant on the lips of the two outsiders, resuming their position at a small fire. The stoking of that fragile blaze on the lawn is as strong as any imagery I’ve met over the whole roadshow.

As in the Caithness production, masters of their craft are teamed with committed volunteers to drive as a team. Writing is strong. The collaborations have integrity. So this domestic work has the widest range of all the pieces I’ve seen.

Billy Riddoch took us to a thousand bars in a few words and back in a longing for the smell of home dirt. Michael Marra’s trawlerman brought us deep down to the cold water, an empty home for the cod who used to be our neighbours and our livelihood.

None of these productions could be called small-scale, Stornoway’s doll’s house included, but Aberdeen’s is massive in its themes. All take risks, a privilege granted to the directors by Vicky Featherstone’s vision for our new National Theatre. She’s an architect who wants to make something bigger than even the finest building.

© Ian Stephen, 2006