Last weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing a performance by The National Theatre of Scotland–The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart. It was staged at our Mondavi Center. The play, when performed in Scotland, is often done in pubs and other common houses. They thus transformed the studio theatre into a pub, complete with a bar and tables. We were greeted with a free shot of Benromach Single Malt Scotch Wiskey and told that all seats were good seats, as the actors would be moving between the tables throughout the performance.
The play incorporated music (each actor could sing, dance, and play at least one instrument) and verse–although it’s uncommon for large portions of contemporary plays to be in verse, it worked somehow here.
The story was simple–Prudencia is a scholar off at a conference. Her methods are traditional–she looks for the stories in old ballads, rather than writing up scholarship on tweets or being a post-post-structuralist like her contemporaries. Her desire to flee from a disastrous roundtable discussion is thwarted by a snow storm. Hours later, her desire to flee from a bacchanalian pub (with strip karaoke) is also thwarted–she is lost in the snow at midnight. She has already been warned that it happens to be the night when the devil may prowl for souls, so she is happy to retreat to a bed and breakfast with its innkeeper, who promises her warmth and use of his large library. The unassuming man also compliments her scholarship . . .
And that’s all it takes for the Devil himself to capture a female scholar.
Prudencia’s current project is actually on hell (including its erotics), so she is disappointed to be trapped for millennia in a bed and breakfast library overlooking a costco parking lot, despite having every book ever written at her disposal. Over the centuries, she comes to know the devil, changing bodily form and all. She is finally able to seduce him, as he does in fact love her. As she escapes, she finds the rip in time that will take her back to the night she was stolen. One of her fellow scholars is out looking for her–although he mocks her work, it is only to cover his own being smitten. She knows enough from the ballads to be able to talk him through the rescue & they return to the bar, where she is able to finally sing her song.
The play was funny, energetic, often satiric, moving, and inventive in its use of traditional myth and current popular culture.
The end, which featured a slow, almost a cappella version of Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” sung to the devil in the back of a crowded pub, was one of the most hauntingly beautiful theatrical moments I’ve ever witnessed.
Thanks for coming out and sharing an evening on tour with us. We’re really chuffed that you enjoyed the show, particularly Pru’s party piece – that part gives us the shivers too!