Highland Heartbeat

3 Aug 2009 in Dance & Drama, Highland, Music

Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 28 July-1 August 2009

Highland Heartbeat

FIONA KENNEDY’S latest lavish production finally made it to the Highlands. Daughter of Gaeldom’s sadly missed “Golden Boy”, Calum, Fiona is no stranger to large scale productions, and this is no exception.

Currently being touted as “The New Riverdance”, the show began in 2007 when sisters Fiona and Morven decided – with the help of Homecoming Scotland – to pull together a Scottish Spectacular which would be sold to American broadcasters PBS, in a bid to attract tourism to the shores of the Old Country.

The show would be broadcast over the network of 354 channels across the US and followed by an extensive tour. The first show was recorded at the Royal Theatre in Glasgow in August last year in front of a live audience, together with a 60 strong youth choir.

The website describes the ambitious show as “capturing the pride and passion of Scotland in a celebration of music that brings centuries old tradition to old and new songs”, and the cast is made up of Fiona Kennedy and five young singers garnered from auditions held in Scotland during 2008.

The current cast list has changed since the original list, which included Old Blind Dogs veteran Jim Malcolm. Today the cast includes Fiona’s second cousin Darren Maclean, a Gaelic singer from Skye; singer-songwriter Maureen McMullan from Coatbridge; Jillian Isbister from Orkney; Frances McCann from Glasgow; and Ross Davidson from Aberdeen.

They were joined at Eden Court by the Fraser School of Dancing instead of the original team of more contemporary “Highland-style” dancers. The 60 strong choir which featured in the original performance were also missing from the Eden Court performances.

There is no doubting the very high performance values of the production in terms of lighting, stage presentation, the band and wardrobe. With almost a different outfit for each song and a very definite “heather” tone to the colour scheme, the Scottish “high-end” fashion industry gets a definite boost, and the women undoubtedly get the better end of the deal; there is, after all, only so many things you can do with a man’s kilt…

The evening I saw it, the production play to an audience of 300 or so, and took the form of a glossy Scottish Variety Performance of songs interspersed with Highland Dance and occasional narration from the epitome of Great Scots’ Voices, Brian Cox.

It was rather surprising that the set did not begin with a traditional solo piper. In fact, there was no live piper at all, but rather, synthesised representations where required. Shame, as I was looking forward to hearing the excellent piping of Angus Binnie, from Cromarty, as named in the programme.

The excellent band played on stage and was made up from some of Scotland’s top musicians right across the musical spectrum, under the experienced direction of David Munro. It would be a dream of many a performer to have such a line-up behind them. It was an inspired addition to have harp exponent William Jackson in the line-up.

Individually, all of the singers are experienced in their own fields. Certainly, they are all very good at what they do, and vocals were generally delivered well with only very occasional weaknesses from some showing through. The vocal performances were strong enough, and might have been even stronger – and had more emotional impact – without the overly dramatic and sorry, but there’s no other word for it, “cheesy” and unnatural choreography.

The actual programme consisted of a variety of “Scots” songs, although I hesitate to use the word “Scots”. Fair enough with old favourites such as ‘Ye Banks and Braes’, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (and please, please make sure it is pronounced Auld not Old, and it is Syne with an S not a Z) and ‘Loch Lomond’, but ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ is an Irish song, written by William McPeake, a native of Belfast, ‘Amazing Grace’ is written by English composer John Newton, and the very weak connection to Robert Burns in Bette Midler’s pop song ‘The Rose’ is really stretching it a bit….

The set was also shortened quite considerably from the set advertised in the programme, with no explanation to the audience.

The most authentic item on the programme for me was the set of “mouth music” by Darren Maclean. Flawlessly sung, though a little too fast for real puirt afficionados, his set of ‘Chaidh sinn suas’, ‘Buachaille Dubh Fionnghal’ and ‘Ruidhleadh mo Nighean Donn’ provided a high point of real Highland culture.

Kennedy explained that they wanted to present a variety of music designed to show the diversity of Scots musical culture today, but on the whole, the mix of classic Scots song, humorous Billy Connolly-style songs and contemporary pop songs with tenuous Scottish links, such as K T Tunstall’s ‘Black Horse and the Cherry Tree’, just did not gel as a balanced set. Disjointed programme items linked by “chat” from Kennedy definitely did not a “Scottish Riverdance” make.

American audiences will no doubt love the lavish production, and there is no doubt that the accompanying CD and DVD will sell well in the US particularly – although I think even they may baulk at the reported DVD price of $85.

The show has the right blend of vocal quality, tartan, “let’s march to stage front” money notes, a quality musical production team, fresh faced young performers and nostalgic Scots sentiment by the bucket load to satisfy the most discerning 3rd, 4th and 5th generation American Scots ….

It is perhaps telling that the average age of the audience in Inverness, however, was probably hovering around the 65 plus age mark. Most Scots, and certainly most young Scots, will find the production just way too sentimental and full of “Highland Cheese”….. But hey, cheese sells……