With an influx of box office movies taking their turn on the boards this season (Rain Man, Kes, Shawshank Redemption), Mark Thomson brings us the one book that has screenwriters and Hollywood barons on their knees: James Hogg’s 1824 novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. This seminal Scottish tale tackles extreme religious belief as a sworn Calvinist is influenced by a Devil like figure to commit to a life of murdering ‘sinners’. Even home-grown Ian Rankin is finding it somewhat impossible to move past the title alone stating that was just one of the problems he’s encountered while trying to extract a filmable story from the absurdly complex narrative. But Thomson explains why the stage is a better place for this classic: ‘It’s a different tool box, our language is a very plain but playful theatre language that has a little bit of magic in it, what you can’t do is cut away. I’ve tried to give the audience the pleasure that I took in reading the novel, trying to balance his darkness and satire and trying all the time to have a marvellous trippy disorientation. It comes from a very dark soul so it needs the odd puncturing of wit.’
Robert is a suicide bomber
It’s not only the format and literary beauty of this novel that make it such an interesting choice for the stage, but it’s devastatingly contemporary content. Whilst nineteenth century Scotland questioned extreme Calvinist belief and writers like Hogg forced debate, Thomson points out that ‘we are now talking about the kind of extremism that exists in our world that has a huge bearing on our lives. I think there’s an argument that says Robert is a suicide bomber, someone who passionately believes they are only destroying sinners: that’s exactly what Robert believes.’ Playing somewhat as a whodunit and with Thomson’s self-imposed genre of ‘gothic, existentialist thriller’ Confessions… will surely open more than one debate.
Playing @ Royal Lyceum: 16 Oct – 7 Nov
Ian Rankin will be the guest speaker at the Curtain Raiser on Tue 20 Oct from 6-7 in the Lyceum Auditorium. (£5 adults, £3 students/concessions/Lyceum Subscribers) Under 18s FREE.