Nuclear Summer

The hype ain’t never what it’s cracked up to be. And so, it’s with an inevitable degree of wearied scepticism that one approaches the bible of bombast that is the Fringe programme. Still, in billing David Greig and David Harrower as “two of Scotland’s greatest playwrights” the Traverse might just have raised the PR bar this year.

“Well, it’s not... I wouldn’t have written that!” laughs Greig. What this definitely isn’t, however, is a denial. Pausing for a moment’s consideration, he continues, hesitantly: “I think they are trying to harness their feeling of excitement about me and David Harrower being on the same bill... and the feeling that it is a special moment. You know... I think I would agree! I think it is quite special. I wouldn’t use that language because I think it would be strange and hubristic to do so. But I’m very, very proud to share a bill with David Harrower. That’s certainly something that is exciting.”

Throughout our conversation, it’s a rare step back from assured eloquence for Greig – an eloquence all the more impressive given that, as we speak, the poor chap is languishing in bed with what he poetically diagnoses as “an incipient lurgy.” But even through the fug of ailment, it’s patently obvious that his excitement is genuine. And given the pedigree of both Davids, it’s pretty hard to deny: their pairing on the same bill is an exciting prospect.

Both CVs are exemplars of prolific—and prolifically acomplished—theatrical production. Harrower shot straight to success with his first play, Knives in Hens – still performed professionally now, 17 years on. Alongside his original works (2003’s Dark Earth, another highlight), Harrower has wrought further acclaim adapting the works of giants of the stage (Brecht, Pirandello and Chekhov, amongst others) for modern audiences. Greig, meanwhile, is perhaps best known for Midsummer: a play with songs, a rom-com beloved by audiences and, remarkably, critics alike. Let it never be said that either David draws back from a challenge.

Restricting themselves here to terse, tense dialogues, two short plays form the headline 80 minutes of the Traverse programme: Harrower’s Good with People charts a long-avoided return to Helensburgh, the home of Britain’s nuclear deterrent programme; The Letter of Last Resort, Greig’s two-hander and by many accounts the most startling of the playlets that comprised the Tricycle theatre’s collection The Bomb—a partial history, takes as its subject one of the more unusual of a new prime minister’s chores—the writing of a letter to be opened in the event that Britain suffers a nuclear attack. The nuclear question, it seems, has a particular allure for dramatic treatment by Scottish writers.

“David [Harrower] lives very near [the nuclear submarine base] Faslane,” Greig explains. “He has submarines going past his window, so that’s in his imagination. And for me, although I was asked specifically to do nuclear, I chose to do this story because I’d seen the submarines too, and because Faslane is... it’s a strange kind of monster in the middle of Scotland.

“I remember all through my childhood—and I also talked to David about this—growing up with this feeling that we had these... creatures on our doorstep. So it was inevitable in a way that we would both end up writing something about that at some point."

Indeed, anyone who has seen one of the Navy’s crow-black nuclear submarines slinking around the Scottish coastline (or, indeed, beached bulkily and embarrassingly on a sandbank off the Isle of Skye in the manner of HMS Astute) will recognise “creature” as an apt metaphor for the hulking vessels. “They move sort of silently like sharks or something,” he continues. "They move under the water invisibly and then when they emerge they are shocking in their size, and the feeling that comes off them when you see them."

There’s a care and precision here with which Greig choses his words that makes a particularly strong impression. What’s noticeable is that, despite their accretions of potential metaphor, his language throughout is strangely valueless. Indeed, in a single line of The Letter of Last Resort, Grieg drives at the nub of the nuclear debate with a clarity rarely seen in the tit-for-tat staple of cod-philosophical natter: "To write 'retaliate' is monstrous and irrational,” Greig’s prime minister observes. “To write 'don't retaliate' renders the whole nuclear project valueless.” It’s a line which, one suspect, will earn Greig his slot in anthologies of British playwriting. It seems certainly to earn him his magniloquent billing at the Traverse.

“Nuclear weapons are kind of complicated,” he explains. “I only began to write the play when I thought it was possible that I could support nuclear weapons. Otherwise it was pointless because if I really don’t like nuclear weapons, what am I going to say? I know there isn’t anything to discuss, really. But when I realised that there was actually a strong argument for nuclear weapons that I could be persuaded by, I thought well, OK, I might be able to write something. Because there’s a fight, isn’t there? There’s a fight between different voices, and that’s when you get a play.”

It’s an ambivalence that might also cause discomfort for Edinburgh’s more right-on theatregoers. But, perhaps, it’s a measure of Greig’s success that he’s able to take such risks: “Because I’ve been writing in Scotland for nearly 20 years, there is a thing where one begins to feel the possibility of being very brave because you think the audience will come with you on that journey."

And with great power, presumably, comes great responsibility? There's a level of hyperbole Greig won't let pass: "If you ever start thinking ‘is this line worthy of an important playwright?’ then it’s just awful! All art is going to turn to ash in your hands if you have that thought. So you just have to... you have to have the same anxieties and neuroses that you always had.

“It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s always taking your clothes off in public. And if you start feeling happy about taking your clothes off in public, then you’re probably on a spiral that you don’t want to go down.”