Theatre of the Month: 5 stars

With James IV: Queen Of The Fight, Rona Munro continues her majestic chronicle of Scotland’s royal history. Lucy Ribchester experiences this timely and unfl inching look at racism and power in a so-called golden age

While watching a three-day production of Shakespeare’s histories, Scottish playwright Rona Munro realised no one had attempted a similar chronicle for Scottish kings. In 2014 she set out to change this with her trilogy of James Plays, which focus on Scotland’s growth and turbulence from the 14th to the 16th century. Now she continues this trajectory with a standalone piece, homing in on a little-known period during the reign of James IV when two Black ladies-in-waiting came to live and work at his court.

Though their story has gained more attention in recent years, details about the lives of these two ‘Moorish lasses’ are sparse (it’s known, for example, they were bestowed handsome clothes, denoting their status). This allows space for Munro to speculate on their roles and reception; here, she places them at the heart of a nation that prides itself on egalitarian welcomes, but shames itself with hypocrisy, expansionism and racism. It’s a complicated, unflinching and blistering analysis of our national character, in which Munro mixes the skill of an ancient textile weaver with the passionate verve of a storyteller, overlapping (as Shakespeare did) threads and themes that hold timeless truths about human nature, as opposed to recording history.

The two women (Ellen and Lady Anne) have travelled from the Iberian courts, escaping Bilbao’s plague to find themselves at the mercy of James IV. While Anne is taken into the fold as a courtier to the petulant, 17-yearold Queen Margaret, Ellen struggles to find her place. That is, until a chance encounter with the king lands her the role of Queen Of The Fight, a symbolic part in a gladiatorial pageant that the king has arranged, to play out his ‘wild man’ fantasies before the nobility of Europe.

No one is entirely happy with their position in this court, including the Makar William Dunbar, forced to pander to regal vanity, and Donald, Lord Of The Isles, kept as a ‘guest’ (hostage) while James unifies the country. Everyone knows the precariousness and constraints in which they live. This is borne out in Laurie Sansom’s staging, where we witness the actors transform from modern-day clothes to period costume, setting up a careful social contract (not unlike a court) that we all have to sign up to, in order for it to work.

Each character, too, wears various metaphorical masks, either within their courtly roles, or in the plays within plays (another parallel with Shakespeare). When the king takes off his ‘wild man’ costume before Ellen, he is revealed to be wearing a chain next to his skin: a metaphor for the imprisonment of kingship. But even this is exposed as theatre when Makar Dunbar tells her he shows it to all his women. Ellen and Anne also have their own ways of holding onto whatever power they can grab. Anne (played with regal poise and sharp wisdom by Laura Lovemore) may act the role of an uncomplaining helper to Queen Margaret (invoking the literary trope of the Black woman tirelessly performing emotional labour for spoilt white women), but when alone with Ellen we see that it is her steely pragmatism that’s driving her. Similarly, Ellen, the more poetic and idealistic of the two (with these traits beautifully drawn out by Danielle Jam) has an ability to turn acidic when clinging to her own hard-won closeness to the king.

Only the royal couple can truly pull rank. In James’ case this comes in terrifying flashes of temper (in a superb, nuanced performance of masculine privilege and volatility by Daniel Cahill) when he isn’t getting his way. In Queen Margaret’s case, this is through a debilitating postnatal depression combined with unchecked power that curdles into the most toxic and violent of brews. Munro, however, appreciates that bad behaviour does not necessarily denote a bad soul, but instead trickles down from the brutal actions of others. There are no heroes and villains in James IV, and as the plot flits from thread to thread, we alternately feel for and condemn almost all of its players. The climax, juxtaposing senseless violence of gladiatorial battle with the similar brutality of racist language, is a reminder of how ugly ambition and self-preservation can be, even in ages that have been painted golden by the national narrative. Perhaps this is what Rona Munro wants us to take away: without staring critically at our past, how can we change our future?

James IV: Queen Of The Fight, Macrobert, Stirling, Wednesday 9–Saturday 12 November; reviewed at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh.