Rantin

Kieran Hurley

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781783190942
• eBook ISBN: 9781783195930
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A retired American steps off the plane at Prestwick, hoping to discover the land of his fathers. A beleaguered politician in Edinburgh dips her feet into a hot bath. An old drunk man in Peterhead has a mystical vision at the harbour. A supermarket checkout girl in Port Glasgow approaches work with a baseball bat... Part living-room gathering, part play, part gig session, Rantin draws on storytelling, live music and an unapologetically haphazard take on Scottish folk tradition, in an attempt to stitch together fragmented stories to reveal a botched patchwork of a nation.

INTRO

As the audience enter we are playing some tunes from the hi-fi. Chatting, getting a drink. We’re setting up the space. Towards the end of this we’ll encourage the audience to fill up their drinks and go for a pee and stuff. When it is time to start we open with a song.

Song: MacPherson’s Rant

Trad. Arr.

Additional words by Drew Wright and Gav Prentice.

DREW: Farewell yon pitheid dark and dank

Farewell farewell to thee

Macpherson’s time will no be long

In yonder colliery

Chorus:

ALL: Sae rantingly, sae wantonly

Sae dauntingly gaed he

He played a tune an’ he danced aroon

Below the gallows tree

DREW: Forgive the man whose rage betrayed

A wound that cannot heal

Fae the Iron Burgh’s great canal

Oot to the toons o’ steel

Chorus

DREW: In the smirr and smelt o’ the Central Belt

We worked wi strength and pride

But then the fall, we lost it all

Oor wives and mithers cried

Chorus

DREW: Farewell to steel, and ships and coal

The pride o’ industry

What price the cost? Oor greatest loss

Was solidarity

Chorus

The song ends.

GAV says thanks for coming, and introduces himself. He probably cracks a joke about the show being credited as “by Kieran Hurley” but since it’s by all of us that’s kind of as if we’re a band called Kieran Hurley who just happen to have a member of the band whose name is also Kieran Hurley. Like Van Halen. Or Manfred Mann. GAV introduces everyone else.

JULIA explains that this show was nearly called Till Apples Grow On An Orange Tree. Then at one point it was going to be called Pie Suppers In The Sky, and then we nearly called it Ah’m No Hairy Mary Ah’m Yer Maw, but we thought better of that, so now it is called Rantin.

KIERAN explains that we’re going to tell some stories, and sing some songs. Each little song, story, or moment is like a turn, or a track in a set list at a gig. As we tell these stories we’d like you to imagine that they are happening in Scotland, right now outside this theatre, as we speak.

DREW explains that what we’re offering is a collection of fragments really. We’re not trying to show the whole story, that would be impossible. There’s no central character here, just some imagined ideas of different people, with different stories, perspectives, next to each other trying to co-exist. Which in some way is what the process of making the show has been like.

Once this has clearly run its course, GAV suggests we start. KIERAN asks to dim the lights.

KIERAN: If this was the start of a film, we imagine that at this point you’d see a map of Scotland as if viewed from above. The map is green and blue and grey.

Underneath the speaking, JULIA begins to sing.

Song: Soraidh Leis An Ait

Trad. Arr.

JULIA: Soraidh leis an àit

An d’fhuair mi m’àrach òg

Eilean nam beann àrda

Far an tàmh an ceò

Air a moch a dh’èireas

Grian nan speur fo ròs

A’fuadach neul na h-oidhche

Soillseachadh an Stòrr

KIERAN: Imagine that now. The map, as the camera slowly moves in on it. Closer. Bigger. And the place names become clearer in a kind of old-looking calligraphy like on pirates’ maps. Or maybe it’s more like chalk on a chalkboard. Or maybe your map is more of a sans serif font like on Google. And then Drew’s voice, in voiceover says:

DREW: This is a story that has multiple beginnings, an abundance of middles, and no clear end. It starts, for our purposes, right here under this old railway arch in Glasgow, with each of you here. But it also starts, among other places, above our heads, here:

HOWARD (1)

JULIA becomes HOWARD.

JULIA: This man is called Howard. He is 67 years old. He clutches his crumpled boarding pass in his hand. Origin: New York JFK. Destination: Prestwick International Airport. A one-way ticket. The print has been smudged slightly from the sweat from his thumbs over the course of his six-hour journey across the Atlantic.

He has never left America before now.

He has been saving, preparing, for this moment. For this.

He thinks about the military pipe music his granddaddy used to play, back home in Lincoln, Nebraska.

He thinks about the hours he’s spent up late, by himself, Googling the real meaning of those mysterious and ancient sounding words.

He hadn’t considered until recently that he might actually move there. But here he is.

He has brought a phrasebook of Scots words with him for the journey.

DREW: Stravaig: verb; to wander. Noun; a journey without purpose.

GAV: Dwam: noun; a stupor or a daydream.

KIERAN: Fankle: verb; to tangle, to twist. Noun; an entanglement, a state of disorder or confusion.

JULIA: Fankle. Wow.

It took Howard a long time to really think of Scotland as an actual place where people are born and live and die. For longer than that it had been an ambiguous reference point, somewhere utterly relevant to who he is but in an invisible and underacknowledged kind of way. It later became a semi mythical place, a point of explanation – a Babylon and a Zion. The fire of the clearances that packed his ancestors off to Canada, their subsequent journey south. Howard thinks about this journey often. He feels it, in his bones.

He was 50 years old when he first watched Braveheart and it changed his life. Even if some of it was made up, sure, I mean Howard’s nobody’s fool. But that very week he bought himself a kilt. Jeez Louise he felt powerful. His varicose roots swelled out of his Celtic warrior legs, and he knew at that moment that one day those warrior muscles were going to take him Home.

Since then he has been real sad about Mel Gibson drink-driving and beating up his wife. And the anti-semitism. That had really got under Howard’s skin, particularly due to his deep affection for the work of Rabbi Burns. Just kidding. Come on, Howard is not an idiot. He knows that Scotland’s bard is not really a rabbi. That’s just his name.

He wrote Mel’s agent a letter telling him how badly he felt that Mel was letting the side down. Before this he had watched Trainspotting on late night pay-per-view and was so intrigued. This is so fucking exotic, Howard thought. My people are the most complex so...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Note on the Original Production
• Intro