Love of Scottish songs the inspiration for unique play

Date Published: 04-Jul-2012

Scottish ballads, a session at a pub lock-in and one woman’s journey to hell in search of a mystery song – this strange mix forms the plot of The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, which is being performed at this year’s Arts Festival. It’s from the acclaimed National Theatre of Scotland on a return visit to Galway.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart takes on the format of a music session, being performed in and around its audience, explains its author David Greig, who has previously worked with the National Theatre of Scotland, as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company and London’s Donmar Warehouse.

The show, which has a cast of five accomplished actors and musicians, originally toured Scotland last year before being staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August. There it won two awards there; a Critics Award for Theatre for Best Music and Sound and a Herald Angel. The Scotsman newspaper described it as “at its best, more vibrantly, sexily alive than any piece of theatre I’ve seen in Scotland for years”. It’s just back from Brazil, where it went down a storm, says David.

When The National Theatre of Scotland first asked David to do a show about the historic and disputed Scottish/English Borders, he immediately thought of the Border Ballads, a series of songs with themes ranging from supernatural creatures to battles over land.

“The Border Ballads are amazing poems and stories and I got very interested in them, especially the supernatural ones, where people go down to the Underworld. So, I was wondering what a contemporary Border Ballad would be like.”

He also had a desire to do something about a pub lock-in.

“I love Scottish folk music and some of my favourite nights are when you find yourself at a lock-in in the middle of a session,” says David, although he admits to his “blood running cold” whenever he is asked to sing.

Researching this project he got help from a Scottish folk historian and collector of folk music by the glorious name about Valentina Bold, whohad great stories about her search for folk songs.

With her permission, David created a 28-year-old female academic music researcher and gave this fictitious creature the even more exotic name of Prudencia Hart.

“Prudencia seemed to embody the emotion and caution you would find in an academic. She is a woman who loves folk music but is not good with people. As soon as the spotlight turns on her she freezes. She loves the craziness and wildness of it, but is not quite able to fully go into it,” says David, adding that while the play “teases academics, it does so in an affectionate way”.

As Prudencia searches for a mysterious song that has never before been collected, she finds herself on an adventure in the Underworld. This visit is life changing, and in front of an assembled group at a lock-in one night, she sings the song of her own undoing.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.