Review by Kenny Mathieson
A Light In The North
5 Nov 2008 in Dance & Drama, Highland, Writing
Dunbeath Heritage Centre, Dunbeath, 1 November 2008
Kenneth Steven
THERE could hardly be a more appropriate setting for this celebration of the work of Neil Gunn than the Heritage Centre presided over by Nan and George Bethune that was once his school, and if this year’s event, organised and programmed by Scotia Review, was on a smaller scale than last year’s three-day spread, it provided a fascinating day.
The morning session was given over to a presentation by novelist and poet Kenneth Steven, chaired by Diarmid Gunn, Neil Gunn’s nephew and an authority on his work. It took place in the main room of the Centre, where a painted map on the floor charts the course of Dunbeath Water through the strath, and commemorates the main events of Gunn’s novel Highland River.
Kenneth Steven spoke about the revelatory impact of being introduced to that book by a teacher at his Perthshire school, a deviation from an official curriculum in which Scottish history and culture was otherwise absent (although he did once have to write an essay justifying the Clearances).
He acknowledged the powerful influence it had on his own Highland Trilogy, and especially the opening volume, Dan, and its successor, The Summer Has Ended. Just as Gunn’s protagonist, Kenn, seeks self-discovery on his search for the source along Dunbeath Water, so Steven’s main character in Dan walks the circle of the perimeter of his smallholding at the end of his life, reflecting on its many phases.
He emphasised the importance of the themes of the people and the land and the relationships that bind them together and shapes both the way we are and the landscape itself. It was a fascinating session, and underlined the persistent resonances from Gunn’s book that echo down the decades.
Sandwiches and a seemingly endless supply of home-baking – like much of what on here, provided by volunteer efforts – saw us through lunch, when we were entertained by local girl Jennifer Ross playing a facsimile of a Pictish harp.
As Nan Bethune pointed out at the start of the day, Dunbeath Heritage Centre is located in the only school that Neil Gunn ever attended (he was privately tutored at his sister’s marital home in Kirkcudbrightshire from the age of 13), and is well worth a visit in its own right. As well as the schematic map of Highland River and some wonderful accompanying photographs, the centre has exhibits reflecting the history and artefacts of the area.
Last year, George Gunn’s Grey Coast Theatre mounted a musical dramatisation of Neil Gunn’s novel Butchers Broom with local school-children, and the Thurso-based company returned this year with a more obscure slice of the writer’s work.
Donna Swanson, Darren Manson and a third actor who introduced himself simply as “TC from Scrabster”, all members of The Skraelings, the community wing of Grey Coast Theatre, read excerpts selected by George Gunn (who read the “novelistic” stage directions) from Neil Gunn’s forgotten three-act play The Ancient Fire.
The play had been performed only once, by the Scottish National Players at the Lyric Theatre in Glasgow in 1929, and remains unpublished. Diarmid Gunn had been able to supply copies of the manuscript from the Gunn holdings at the National Library in Edinburgh, enabling this taste of the play.
They read extracts from Act 1, set in a small clothes shop in Glasgow in hard times for the local shipyard workers, and from Act 2, when the shop-owner, Lachie, has returned for a holiday to his native Caithness, and gets tangled with the American owner of the big house. The actors had the opportunity for only one previous run-through of the work, and if the odd hesitation and stumble – and one missed cue – betrayed their lack of familiarity with the text and characters, they coped well with the challenge.
In the discussion which followed, George Gunn agreed that it was very likely the original failure of the play had been on the back of an inadequate staging. It was difficult to gauge the overall quality or practical stage-ability of the play from this degree of exposure, but George was adamant that a proper staging of the play was not only entirely possible now, but should happen.
© Kenny Mathieson, 2008
