Safe to say that Agnes Broun, Jean Armour and the woman known only as Clarinda never met at the grave of Robert Burns to commemorate his birthday. Even safer to say that had mother, wife and upper-class lover had such a meeting, they would not have spent the time filling each other in on their relationship with the great poet.
No matter. The contrivance of John Binnie’s play, set on 25 January with an eye to performances on Burns Nights to come, paves the way for what really makes this show tick: an attractive compilation of favourite songs, sweetly sung by Alyson Orr (Agnes), Stephanie Cremona (Jean) and Eden Barrie (Clarinda), following the pretty harmonies of Orr’s arrangements and the simple acoustic guitar accompaniment of Chris Coxon.
Seen at a preview performance, A Toast Fae the Lassies quickly makes you forget the staginess of the setup. The artifice seems more than justified by such tender renditions of Ae Fond Kiss, Charlie Is My Darling and A Red, Red Rose, as well as other songs and poems, especially when the actors step out of character to take on other scenes from the poet’s life.
Harder to overlook is the graveyard set by Natalie Fern, which, with its raised platforms and scattered headstones, becomes an obstacle course for the actors, moving about the limited studio space in their period dress. It is needlessly cluttered.
But what emerges forcibly, as the women trade notes, is a picture of a man who today would be called a sex addict. By the time he married Jean Armour, Burns had fathered several children by her – and by others, too – and however cerebral his meeting of minds with Clarinda, it did not stop him impregnating her maid.
Here, the women are torn between being seduced and being outraged. On the one hand, the captivating hold of his language; on the other, poems they see as thinly disguised excuses for his philandering. In this way, Binnie, who also directs, paints a portrait of a contradictory man, one capable of indifference and tenderness, crude animal instinct and timeless beauty. It adds grit to a crowd-pleasing show.
