Theatre Alba

The Scotsman 20/08/2003

The Burning

Joyce McMillan

DUDDINGSTON KIRK MANSE GARDEN (VENUE 121)

IT’S many years now since Charles Nowosielski’s Theatre Alba began to present Festival shows in the Manse Garden on the shores of Duddingston Loch; but I’ve never seen that beautiful, slightly eerie setting put up a finer performance than it does as the backdrop for this revival of Stewart Conn’s The Burning, first seen in Edinburgh in 1971. It’s not only that the place is physically close to so many of the settings for this story, set in the late 1580s, about the young King James VI’s cruel vendetta against what he saw as a growing cult of witchcraft in the land; it’s also the richness of the trees, the effect of the gathering darkness, the sight of the full moon rising over the loch, and sailing between the branches.

The production itself, though, is more of a mixed bag, with Nowosielski’s 20-strong professional and community cast producing the usual range of performances, from the excellent (James Sutherland’s teasing, sexy Bothwell) to the slightly embarrassing. As for the play - well, it has a terrific narrative fluency, and a powerful insight into the politics of the time. But in this production at least, its attitude to the central image of witchcraft seems oddly ambivalent, as if Conn the writer, like Nowosielski the director, was torn between a rationalist urge to condemn James’s shameless superstition and cruelty, and a fascination with the old world of pagan belief contained in witch’s lore. And in this case, the ambivalence finally seems more confusing than revealing.