Book by Rob Drummond

Music and Lyrics by Dave Hook

Directed by Orla O’Loughlin

Review by Orly Benn

Traverse Theatre

This week’s A Play, A Pie, A Pint, written by Rob Drummond and Dave Hook, brings us a slick and thought-provoking hip-hop musical comedy with the life (or myth) of 13th-century Scottish legend and freedom fighter William Wallace at the centre of its conversation. What arises out of Wallace, though, is less a biographical chronicle of Wallace’s life and more a compelling, discursive exploration of the role of power, archive, folklore, and collective history in the formation of modern Scottish identities.

Immediately, we are thrust into the Celtic sphere of energetic pub outings that had their genesis in the very histories that the characters now recount. Three 21^st century characters navigate the narrative of their history through meticulously crafted lyrical rap, merging old oral folk storytelling traditions with modernist rhythm and metre that serves as a beautiful reminder of the natural melody of conversation.

Dave Hook, Manasa Tagica and Patricia Panther, as the three performer,s work wonderfully as a dynamic trio that bounce off each other with brilliant chemistry that exposes crucial clashes in the systemised power dynamics between English and Scottish identities, as well as gendered disparities in archival history. Tagica stands out as a performer exceedingly comfortable and confident navigating tricky corners of music and drama on stage, whose range impressively guides us between the 21^st and 13^th centuries with ease.

Drummond and Hook’s writing, aided by the masterful direction of Orla O’Loughlin, humbly and subtly unravels its own complexity throughout the hour; what appears to be a predictable historiographic argument interrogating the representations of characters in history develops into an astute investigation on the impact of power and historical archive on the formation of modern identities; a discourse becoming more prominent with academics like Saidiya Hartman. Indeed, when the ‘Woman’ character begins to insist that ‘Wallace never existed’, the pressing conversation at hand is not whether this is true, but instead what forces of power are at work to lead us to believe he did. When humans themselves are responsible for the representation of history, these historical accounts inevitably reflect the power structures that govern those that recorded them; William Wallace is represented as equal parts terrorist and freedom fighter by those who wished to paint him so.

This influence and pervasion of power in the historical archive reveals itself perhaps even more insidiously through Panther’s character, ‘Woman’, whose main concern is not HOW women are represented but rather that they are not represented full stop. For the majority of the play, Woman serves a very passive function, with minimal dialogue and maximum reactivity to the stories that her male counterparts recount. Although this point is directly made, it is not until the end that the purpose for this is truly revealed; ‘Woman’ becomes the central mouthpiece for the subjugation of historical identities to the power of the archives. Panther is equal parts assertive and sensitive, mobilising this didactic denouement with astonishing ease.

By the end, Hook and Drummond’s piece is allegorised in the beautifully condensed line; ‘there are three sides to every story’. Indeed, what we learn after seeing Wallace, is that these three sides are not necessarily represented with equal weight, and could instead be better understood as: the side that is representing, the side that is represented, and the side that has the power to be neither.

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