THE LAIRD O' GRIPPY.
Dundee
THE LAIRD O’ GRIPPY
by Robert Kemp adapted from Moliere
Dundee Rep To 10 May 2003
Runs 2hr One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 May
Scots does fine by France – and there's an outstanding central performance.Put it down to the Auld Alliance or whatever, Scottish theatre has a way with Moliere, France’s greatest writer of comedies. But this is something special: a 1950s free adaptation into Scots, by a lover of French theatre.
Kemp follows Moliere’s plot and jokes, but compared with your average literal-going-on-literary - or your personality-playwright - translation spoken in a wallow of English RP this is full-flavoured delicious organic.
Insults and paeans roar and soar. Best of all, arguments zing and bounce, sting and pounce in a compound of tough consonants and expressively roomy vowels, making a barrage of terse communication. No enervating luxury of thought. Breath isn’t saved to cool porridge; it’s used to stamp the moment’s thought.
Tony Cownie’s production laps it up with the same perky-going-on-cheeky style he's brought to early Shakespeare at Edinbro's Royal Lyceum. Swiftly played, comic business never over-elaborated and always with the script’s angle in mind, it’s an hilarious evening filled with delightful Scottish performances.
And lovely moments from Janine Mellor’s servant, suitably lumpen for an Englishwoman in the nest – her words haeing tae be translated fer the laird, till the gag’s comic climax as she essays a few words o’ Scots hersell in best tourist phrase-book manner.
Or there’s the delightful argument -energetically played by the men as the woman stands forcefully 'ahem'-ing at the side - with Rodney Matthew, lover to the Laird’s daughter but presenting himself as the boss’s yes-man, trying to support both sides in an argument over whom the young woman should marry.
Inserting subversive points, he’s forced into a corner by Grippy's invincible argument – the Laird intends Elspeth for an old friend who requires no dowry. ‘ ‘Aye, but no tocher,’ returns as dead-end to all reason.
What deepens the evening is Sandy Neilson’s outstanding Grippy. Waddling round like a wrinkled penguin, stooping from a lifetime pouring over accounts-books, he’s laughable – yet Neilson also makes him, though not likeable, curiously sympathetic. Myopic of mind as well as eye (stumbling even worse when he wears unnecessary glasses as he believes his intended likes that), he’s extra-strong gullible. It's a remarkable portrait of a life lost through gain.
Nigel: Andrew Clark
Elspeth: Claire Dargo
Bodkin/Captain: Keith Fleming
Hector: Rodney Matthew
Meg: Janine Mellor
The Laird of Grippy: Sandy Neilson
Solomon/Mr Cramond: Robert Paterson
Mistress Frizel: Ann Louise Ross
Mirren: Emily Winter
Jock: Alexander West
Director: Tony Cownie
Lighting: Jenny Kagan
Music: Vivaldi arranged Iain Johnstone
2003-05-21 16:43:24