L-R Patricia Panther, Manasa Tagica (in the background), Madeline Grieve, Dave Hook and Kimberly Mandindo in Wallace at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Wallace was reviewed at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Raw Material Arts has brought together a very talented group of creatives to examine the Scottish hero William Wallace. Famed through legends and one outstanding, if rather inaccurate, film starring Mel Gibson, this show asks who Wallace really was: was he real? Was he a man of the people? Or was he even really Scottish? Or did he actually ever exist?
In a club-like DJ set, the composer and lyricist Dave Hook takes control of the rhythms and beats as the narrator, played by Ross Mann, begins the story to find out who Wallace was and what it means to be Scottish in our day and age.
Mann controls the stage and the audience with an edgy ease – as if he’s looking for a fight and is well ready for it. As the other characters appear, the columns of lights upstage begin to pulse and rotate, becoming blindingly intense across the audience. It may well be that the uneasy feeling is deliberate, and that is not a bad thing, but it would perhaps be more effective if used more sparingly.
Edward Longshanks is wittily portrayed by Manasa Tagica as he brings the outsider’s view of Wallace to light, suggesting it was not Wallace who even had the strategic thinking that led to the famous victories.
In supporting roles, Madeline Grieve, Kimberly Mandindo and Patricia Panther really are exceptional with each having a ‘showcase’ moment as well as strong chorus work. The ballads are especially worthy of praise with tingling harmonies, clearly telling the stories of the often forgotten women in Wallace’s life and times. Indeed, young women and girls are shown to be fighters in the army too.
Wallace himself is almost portrayed as a background figure: stepping down from the upstage DJ decks, he stands as a solo figure who becomes aligned with a range of members from the nobility to support his cause.
The set, designed by Neil Haynes, affords great movement and degrees of height that keep the visuals lively. There are three large, broad steps in the centre, surrounded by a ramped border all used to great effect. A large stag carcass is suspended above the set prior to the opening that is then flown above out of sight. The stag is lowered to the stage for Act II, strewn across the first and second steps just as Wallace’s legend is being challenged.
Written by Rob Drummond and directed by Orla O’Loughlin, Wallace is an interesting problem play. The songs are good, some very good, and with stronger articulation would be conveyed more clearly than at present.
The resonance with the current political state in Scotland is clear and this makes Wallace a very timely production indeed.
Fiona Orr
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