Book review: Modernism and Scottish Theatre since 1969: A Revolution on Stage by Mark Brown

G K Chesterton once wrote that he would no more call himself a Modernist than a Tuesdayist, since Tuesdayism would be out of date by Wednesday, and indeed Modernism has now given way to Post-Modernism and even, in some quarters, to post-Post-Modernism.

Modernism is an elusive concept. There was never any manifesto, nor was there an identifiable group, like the Pre-Raphaelites. In tackling associated issues, Mark Brown unites two sides of his being. He is a workaday newspaper critic and quotes his own reviews, but he has also a closet life as an academic theorist, puzzling over the great enigmas of the age. This book started life as a PhD thesis, and is still weighed down by the apparatus of academic research, but it is fleshed out with keen insights drawn from evenings spent in the stalls of theatres, in Scotland and abroad.

He first confronts Modernism in the abstract, saying it could come in the form of ‘Futurism, Constructivism, Cubism, Dadaism, Absurdism and a panoply of other movements or tendencies.’ That makes it one bulky portfolio, but for him Modernism in theatre manifested itself in other ways: the emergence of the auteur (the French term is required), the aesthetics but not the politics of Bertolt Brecht, the physicality inherent in the mime theories and practice of Jacques Lecoq and, more unexpectedly and dubiously, the theatre of Howard Barker. Other Modernist candidates such as Ibsen, Strindberg and Pirandello can only look on from the wings.

Above all, Modernism flourished on the continent, so that in theatre it is in essence European, non-naturalistic, emphatically not London-based, allowing it to take root in Scotland in defiance of London. Its growth was aided by the absence of any native tradition of theatre since that tradition had been strangled at birth by the hostility of Calvinism to such frivolities as playwriting or performance. Brown is very precise about the date of the transplant of Modernism. ‘In 1969 a young, Edinburgh-born theatre director by the name of Giles Havergal was appointed as artistic director of Glasgow’s major repertory playhouse, the Citizens Theatre.’ Within two years of his arrival, the Citizens had been transformed into ‘a powerhouse of European Modernist aesthetics.’ The tone is Homeric and the self-effacing Havergal is made to sound like an Ajax.

The other operative in this Caledonian powerhouse was Communicado headed by Gerry Mulgrew, and their main contribution was the addition of ‘popular experimentalism.’ Communicado’s approach was based on an original blend of the methods of Lecoq and Grotowski, specifically the latter’s notions of ‘poor theatre.’ Brown had the full cooperation of the theatre-makers he discusses, and is scrupulously fair in reporting their responses even when they dissent from his interpretation. Mulgrew, for instance, identifies shortcomings in the Lecoq outlook, and states that having seen its limitations he had come to appreciate story-telling, or ‘playwrights and texts.’ Brown’s belief is that Communicado played a decisive role in embedding Modernism in theatre in this country, and in preparing the path for what he describes as the ‘golden generation,’ or ‘halcyon age’ of playwriting in Scotland, that is, in the 1990s.

His enthusiasm is infectious and there is no reason to disagree with this view that the best playwrights and theatre-makers in Scottish history are alive and working now. He chooses the five he judges the leading Modernist lights and conducts valuable and perceptive interviews which allow them to express themselves fully. The five include four writers - David Greig, Zinnie Harris, David Harrower and Anthony Neilson - and one ‘auteur,’ the designer turned director, Stewart Laing. None of them fully buys into Brown’s vision of them as Modernism’s banner-wavers. When pressed, Harrower states bluntly, ‘In my case, no,’ while Harris admits she does not ‘think about her writing in those conceptual terms.’ None of them is spontaneously keen on theories of Modernism or anything else.

There is something peculiarly Scottish in this robust anti-intellectualism which of itself would distinguish debates in pubs from philosophical discussions in salons in Paris or Milan. That is not to say that Brown is mistaken. A good critic is not one who tells artists what they already know but one who can set them back on their heels, who would shock John Milton by telling him that his most intriguing character was Satan, not God the Father. There is much that can be debated in Brown’s judgements and some surprising omissions, but he does set new parameters for discussion. I think he overplays the absence of tradition and undervalues earlier twentieth-century playwrights, not only those like Stanley Eveling or C P Taylor who flourished in the Traverse in decades before the 1990s, but also the earlier playwrights like J M Barrie and James Bridie, now routinely snubbed, except in Pitlochry. Barrie was certainly no naturalist. This is a well-grounded, deeply reflective and important work, even if some of the most revealing sections are clustered round a central thesis which is imposed with undue rigidity.