The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil took Scotland by storm in 1973 and played all over the country.  I didn't see it.  There was a TV version.  There was a radio version.  I didn't see them.  The show was revived to great acclaim in a tent on the Meadows in the 90s.  I didn't see that.  Nor did I see any of the occasional amateur productions that have taken place.  Well, I didn't know about them.

So when I opened the i in the train on my way to Oban and read that Dundee Rep were about to put it on I was delighted.  Here at last was a opportunity that I was not going to let pass to see what had become a legend of Scottish theatre.  I checked seat availability from the Mull ferry and was so busy emailing potential companions for a trip to Dundee that I didn't notice we had docked at Craignure and had to fight my way at speed through a swarm of boarding passengers for fear of missing the bus to Tobermory.

Emailing disappointingly resulted in a party of only three to attend the final matinee and indeed we were three but not the original three.  The play is performed within the setting of a ceilidh and to heighten that illusion a number of tables were set up on the stage and occupied by audience members who also had the opportunity to buy a wee dram from an on-stage bar.  Now this was very jolly and atmospheric and what not and I deliberately chose to sit there but really I'd have had a much better view from the auditorium.

It began with singing and dancing as a ceilidh would and then in a mixture of pantomime, satirical cabaret and morality tale it worked its agitprop way through the clearances (nasty landowners), the sporting estates (those nasty landowners again) and the oil boom (nasty foreign capitalists and local speculators).  Jeremy would have loved it.  The PM and his pig was too good a joke not to find a place as one of the few updatings and I suppose it fitted in with the general idea of the moneyed classes enjoying high jinks, though in that case no teuchters appear to have suffered.

While the show is extremely entertaining its hard message is that over centuries the land and its resources have been alienated from the people. By coincidence I had just finished reading The Poor had no Lawyers which is an excellent book about land ownership in Scotland from the Middle Ages to the present day.  The author, Andy Wightman, puts forward a number of legal and social changes that he argues are needed to reduce the concentration of land ownership in a small number of hands that continues to prevail in Scotland despite some transfers to community trusts and the like.

I imagine that when John MacGrath wrote The Cheviot he wanted to change things in favour of the common man rather than just illustrate his plight.  I fear that despite its succès d'estime it has failed in that respect. No matter, I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed also an open air meal after the show at the DCA in these unusually balmy Autumn days.