The Silver Darlings

Exactly a year ago, Kenny Ireland, Hayden Griffen, and the Aberdeen Performing Arts had a stunning success with their stage adaptation of “Sunset Song”. This year the same team are back at the King’s Theatre with a stage version of Neil M Gunn’s “The Silver Darlings”. Given the same storytelling chorus approach and a similar epic tale one would hope for a comparable success – and yet it just doesn’t seem to happen. Where “Sunset Song” brought a mood of feistiness and optimism, “The Silver Darlings” leaves one feeling hurled along, too much crammed in, altogether too flat Our heroine Catrine is no Chris Guthrie. Very ably played by Meg Fraser, she does not have the likeable grit of Chris, but is more unpleasantly self-willed – clingy to begin with, beset by strange dreams of death, gloomy, and at times overbearing. It says a lot for Meg Fraser’s performance that we can believe in the softer, more human Catrine at the play’s end. Finn den Hertog as her son Finn is magnificent and utterly believable in his portrayal of a young man testing his courage, finding his way, and standing up for himself against his determined mother. His reaction of scorn to her suggestion of university for him is a rare moment of humour – “Latin! Why would I want to learn Latin?!” Bad suggestion indeed for a practical young man who knows exactly where his skills lie. In some ways he is the Chris Guthrie of this play, but finding his fulfilment in skill, rather than formal education.
The stage setting is against a backdrop of old northeast black and white photos, again downbeat when compared to the blazing colours used in “Sunset Song”. After a rather hectic Act One, where too much of the epic novel seems to be crammed in, the second act has a slower pace, and more dramatic tension. It is good on the background story, and illuminating as to that period of Scottish social history.

King’s Theatre Oct 6th – 10th