The James Plays

As the centre-piece of this year’s International Festival programme, and the focal point of the National Theatre of Scotland’s 2014 season, it is no great exaggeration to say that there is a fair amount of expectation surrounding The James Plays. Appearing timeously on the cusp of the Scottish Independence referendum, there is also a fair degree of political scrutiny surrounding the production. It’s subject matter, after all, is the little-taught history of a king who laid the foundations of the pre-modern Scottish state in defiance of his English neighbour and his two successors in name and title.

The story of King James I of Scotland is, of the three, the most epic in scope. It also has the most to do, balancing its twin duties of establishing and explaining the structures of power and the political rulebook governing the world of the play, while also carrying and driving forward a character-driven narrative. The Key Will Keep the Lock follows the young King James from the final days of his 18 year imprisonment under Henry IV of England, portrayed as a semi-barbaric tyrant, to the throne of Scotland. However, it is in Stirling, Scotland’s medieval seat of power, that his life is most at threat. The Scottish king’s power depends entirely on balancing the various interests of all-powerful feudal lairds, and yet James has ambitions of dragging Scotland out of an endless civil war between feuding local warlords and establishing sometime resembling the rule of law. Something resembling peace.

The real success of the series is the creeping sense of paranoia and fear playwright Rona Munro captures, portrayed firstly in the anguished cries of James’s young queen in The Key Will Keep the Lock and seen, more profoundly, through the eyes of the terrified boy-king in Day of the Innocents. Life in 15th century Scotland was a Hobbesian nightmare: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Indeed, towering over the action—and in place for all three strands of the trilogy—stands an enormous Claymore sword, jutting out of the ground like a 25-foot high crucifix. It is a stark reminder that it is brute force that rules in this place; God is nowhere to be found.

This idea is played out to terrifying effect in the story of James II. Crowned at the age of four, shortly after his father is murdered in a sewer by the same aristocrat who now keeps him captive, the young king is mentally scarred by the ordeal and the palpable fear of those around him. The perilous fragility of his position stands in stark contrast to the performed subjugation of his effective jailers. Horrors are committed in his name, while the child stands as a pawn in the ongoing chess match between William Crichton and Alexander Livingstone. Where The Key Will Keep the Lock establishes the rules of the game at play in fifteenth century Scotland, Day of the Innocents provides a gripping contemporary critique of the brutality of the place, the barbarism of the people. Told through the eyes of a child too small to protect himself and his family, the perilous position of those sat close to power is shown in terrifying technicolour. This second part is the subtle, fragile jewel in the crown of this remarkable trilogy.

If there is a weakness with the three-piece, it is to be found in the final instalment. Where Jameses I and II concern themselves with the high politics, power-play and intrigue of state-building, The True Mirror is concerned far more with the domesticity of life in the court of James III. For here is a king that eschews the balancing of power that his forefathers saw, literally, as a matter of life and death, in favour of indulging his own narcissism. He is a king obsessed with the pageantry, pomp and circumstance of the crown, a king who would bankrupt his already poor country for the benefit of his own ego. The True Mirror is the most comic and lighthearted of the three, but it is also the least ambitious and tonally sits a little oddly in the series.

Munro has cited Shakespeare’s historical plays an inspiration for this trilogy. Yet stylistically, she eschews cod-Shakespearean, mock-fifteenth century dialogue in favour of a more contemporary linguistic metre, the result being a free-flowing, accessible production. The trilogy’s sense of humour is noticeably present-day too, although sometimes it veers a little close to Chewing the Fat territory. Yet the mix of low-brow sensibility and high-drama creates a rich tapestry, one that is both history lesson and popular entertainment.