THE TOBACCO MERCHANT'S LAWYER To 24 October.
London.
THE TOBACCO MERCHANT’S DAUGHTER
by Iain Heggie.
Finborough Theatre above Finborough Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 24 October 2009.
Runs 50min No interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 October.
Wryly-wrought words from the unenlightened end of the Enlightenment.
Originally seen as part of Òran Mór’s highly-regarded programme of weekly lunchtime theatre out by Glasgow’s Botanics, Iain Heggie’s play has travelled via Edinburgh’s Traverse, Glasgow Tron and Ullapool’s MacPhail Centre to this third incarnation at the Finborough, which again shows itself again a crucible for fine theatre from areas the rest of London misses.
Heggie wittily imagines a man without imagination. Enoch Dallmellington sits in his room in 18th-century Glasgow’s Merchant City, when that was Glasgow, while, only a few hundred yards along, where Central Station now stands, was separate, downmarket Grahamston.
Enoch would never venture there – mentally, he never ventures to the unknown or disreputable. He prefers toadying to Glasgow’s ermine-gowned tobacco merchants, despite being told they’re dirty themselves under their robes. Until he ventures into this one-street neighbourhood (so bad it held the theatre Glasgow’s powers-that-be forbade in their own precinct).
Of course, he does so only at the insistence of one of the tobacco kings. Putting his trust in the establishment, confident a wholly healthy Glasgow requires tobacco smoking, laughing at the notion it will one day be banned in public, he’s diddled in turn out of money, home and daughter by the dignitaries on whom he fawns.
Hindsight’s rarely as hilarious as when channelled by Heggie through Enoch’s complacency. Laughing at the local prophetess’s foretellings of cars, TV etc – her prognostications on society lead her to call herself a political medium – Enoch’s exposed in all his bland self-assurance.
Callum Cuthbertson is the third Enoch - a role created by John Bett, who might well have given it a more forceful comedy. But Cuthbertson makes it his own, catching the small-man, a middle-class lawyer confident of his place in society through knowing who to look-up to, so sure of his position in 18th-century Glasgow he doesn’t notice how precarious it actually is, unable to contemplate change, confident nobody, certainly not his audience, can see beyond his limitations. His quietly assured manner seems perfect in Liz Carruthers’ tactful production, its era suggested by drawings of the territory and music from one of Scotland’s composers of the day.
Enoch Dalmellington: Callum Cuthbertson.
Director: Liz Carruthers.
Designers: Gordon Bavaird, Marthe Hoffman.
Lighting: John Cairns.
Music: James Oswald.
2009-10-25 23:50:24