Two brothers play a game, betting on who can avoid getting burned by a lit match. Tom wants to play. Rob goes along good-humouredly. They might be in purgatory, or hiding inside their heads from all-too-imaginable horrors awaiting them in the real world. It turns out these brothers have already bet for more than just matchsticks and singed fingers. They are two of the plotters in the infamous Gunpowder Plot, and they bet for regime change with their lives.
Over the last few years, writer and director Emma Howlett has become a reliable producer of quality theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe. This year she brings The Plot to Summerhall, a visually striking, complex exploration of stories, power and imagination.
Howlett piles layers and layers of narrative on top of each other. There is the story of Tom and Rob, trapped wherever they are. They in turn tell us the story of the Gunpowder Plot, its conception and failure. Lurking on the edges is William Shakespeare, writing a play about plotting and regicide himself.
Underneath all of this are undeniable contemporary resonances, a generation of angry young men with little to lose, who feel disenfranchised and are willing to see the world burn as a result. References to an ‘England divided’, to ‘thinking of our own people’, to the supposed loss of ‘English values’ could come right out of the headlines today.
Although the strand regarding Shakespeare is a satisfying sub-plot – the text peppered with quotes from Macbeth – the efforts to use it to interrogate who controls history and the stories we tell about it are not so successful. The plotters were undoubtedly treated horribly – tortured and butchered – but it is hard to suggest their reputations have been too unfairly besmirched by biased storytelling in the centuries since.
The script is sharply written, smart and funny, although it sometimes feels though as if it borrows too heavily from others to really sparkle. Stoppard and Beckett echo a little too loudly.
Sophie Kean and Abby McCann are mostly excellent throughout, each playing numerous roles over the course of the play. McCann is the broader actor of the two, mining each part for its full comic potential. Her Robin (leader of the conspirators) is played with a permanent delusional smile, her King James I & VI is a campy delight.
However, it is Kean who really carries the play’s emotional core. Her performances of each of the characters she plays are subtly but clearly delineated. Attorney General Coke creeps across the stage like a hunting spider. She fully gets across Tom’s childish frustration, whether that is losing a silly bet to his brother or the feeling of disenfranchisement that leads to his plotting and death.
They perform beneath an ominous set, an iron grille looming over their heads hung with the chains and keys of their incarceration and torture. The lighting and sound design throughout are superb, with clever reversible costumes reinforcing the artifice of the storytelling.
The undoubted dramatic highpoint of the play comes as Tom and Rob imagine their younger bother John’s execution. It brings an unbearable humanity and sympathy to these men, for all their aims of bloodshed and murder. The Plot may concern itself with seventeenth-century politics, but its concerns are very much of the present day.
Performed at Summerhall on 17 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe
06-31 August (not 18 or 25), 19:30
Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes, no interval
Written and directed by Emma Howlett for theatregoose
Set and Costume Designer: Ellie Wintour
Lighting Designer: Ed Saunders
Composer and Sound Designer: Sarah Spencer
Cast: Sophie Kean, Abby McCann