Review: You'll Flip Your Kilt Over THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART

For some inexplicable and unplanned but possibly mystical reason, I've been immersed in Scottish culture this last month. First, an introductory course to Scotch whisky. Then, a filming of Justin Kurzel's very moody and gripping Macbeth with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. And now, a most intriguing, unique, and pleasurable theatrical experience via The National Theatre of Scotland's THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART. I should own a kilt!

"It's difficult to know where to start, with the strange undoing of Prudencia Hart." So it goes with this innovative piece of interactive drama, written by David Greig (2011) and starring the enchanting Jessica Hardwick as Prudencia and David McKay as Beelzebub.

Director Wils Wilson converts the back stage of the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts into a pub wherein the five actor troupe conveys Prudencia's odyssey of personal discovery in devilishly well-constructed rhymed couplets, a remarkable feat in itself, and theatrobatics among the tabled audience.

We the audience are in the action! It's a midwinter's evening. We're in a pub ~ a ceilidh place, "where stories and tales, poems and ballads, are rehearsed and recited, and songs are sung, conundrums are put, proverbs are quoted, and many other literary matters are related and discussed." The troupe opens with folk music. We are enjoined to make snow ~ out of shredded napkins ~ and we create the weather!

Prudencia Hart, a 28 year old post-graduate student (her PhD was on the topography of Hell), a serious-minded folklorist, a collector of folk ballads, and traditionalist has traveled from Edinburgh to speak on her specialty, the Border Ballads, at a conference in Kelso. Her presentation is not well-received as Dr. Colin Syme (the thoroughly charming and engaging Paul McCole) ridicules her work as irrelevant. Humiliation! Snowbound and waylaid with her rival in a local pub, Prudencia embarks on a wild ride to the underworld and a confrontation with the devil that will challenge her worldly premises about love, beauty, and matters of importance.

David McKay is fierce and enigmatic as her mentor, pushing and pulling Prudencia toward revelation. (Prudencia, We have a lot in common, you and I, each of us alone, and questing to capture that which we find interesting. To fix the butterfly with a pin, to catch a thought with words to put it in. We don't have such different roles. It's just - You're a collector of songs, and I'm a collector of souls.) Creative writing, indeed! It is up to Prudencia to find the key to Hell's egress and the path to balance.

Annie Grace and Alasdair Macrae round out the fabulous cast as muses, accompanists, and clarions, channeling with force and precision Macrae's music and the choreography of Janice Parker and romping in multiple caricatures around the pub in the pub.

This is a grand and exciting form of theatre, rich with musicality, muscularity, and message. So, hats off ~ or shall I say, a tip of the tam o' shanter ~ for a performance exceedingly well done!

Following its run at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts' Virginia G. Piper Theater through April 24th, THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART will continue its national tour, next stop the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, Virginia.

Photo credit to Johan Perrson

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