The Scotsman Sessions #430: Kevin Lennon and Molly Innes

“I just loved this novel as soon as I read it,” says Dogstar’s artistic director Matthew Zajac, best known as the writer and performer of The Tailor of Inverness, his great solo play about the wartime experience of his Polish refugee father. “And it just struck me that the scenes and images it creates are so vivid and dramatic that it would make a great piece of theatre; so I began to work on an adaptation. I’ve been trying to get it on stage ever since; and now, thanks to Eden Court Theatre which originally commissioned the script, and now Creative Scotland’s touring fund, it’s finally happening.”

Robertson’s novel - partly written as a homage to James Hogg’s mighty 1824 masterpiece The Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner - begins with the story of a publisher who is reflecting on the sudden disappearance of Gideon Mack, the minister of a small Scottish town called Monimaskit. The publisher is in possession of Gideon’s testament, discovered soon after he vanished; and most of the narrative consists of this testament, in which Gideon recounts his conversations about faith and the loss of faith with various people he encounters, including - so he believes - the Devil himself, whom he meets when he falls into a local gorge, during a bleak time following the the death of his wife.

“It’s a remarkable story in that it hasn’t got a particularly strong narrative arc,” says Zajac, “but is still absolutely absorbing and compelling. And I think what drew me to it, apart from its theatricality, was the sense that it is a great novel about the lucky postwar generation into which both James Robertson and I were born - a generation that have lived our lives in peace and relative prosperity, and have been free like no generation before to discard the old certainties of religious belief. This is one of the huge social shifts of the last 80 years; and Robertson captures it in a way that’s witty and self-mocking, but also searching, and profound.”

In this scene from the play, recorded for the Scotsman Sessions, we meet Gideon - played by Kevin Lennon - during his first conversation with Christine Craigie, a retired history teacher who befriends him following his wife’s death, in which he shares his interest in Scotland’s religious history. Christine is played by Molly Innes, while Zajac himself will play the Devil in the show. Recent RCS graduate Meghan de Chastelain directs, and the cast also includes five other actors, with the company covering 20 different roles altogether.

“I’m just so delighted that we applied for, and got, enough support to create a production on the scale James’s story deserves,” says Zajac, “and that we’ll be taking it to big spaces like the Macrobert main stage, Traverse One in Edinburgh, and Dundee Rep. In my mind, I’m always primarily an actor; I’ve only written two or three scripts in my life, including The Tailor of Inverness. But it’s a real joy to have helped create a stage version of a novel that is so loved, by so many people; a vital story about our generation’s journey away from faith, brilliantly told.”

The Testament Of Gideon Mack on tour across Scotland from 13 February until 14 March. For details, see the Dogstar Theatre Facebook page

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