FringeReview Scotland 2025
Low Down
Dogstar have adapted James Roberton’s modern classic, The Testament of Gideon Mack, for the stage. Gideon Mack is a man who’s a child of the manse but grows up to throw these beliefs aside while nonetheless becoming a minister himself – a minister who doesn’t believe. Until the day he meets the Devil…
Review
How do we deal with good and evil in a world where religion no longer occupies the central place in society it once did? How do we mark our rites of passage – the hatches, matches and dispatches of everyday life?
James Robertson’s novel, The Testament of Gideon Mack, plays with and teases out, these questions taking its inspiration from James Hogg’s 1824 classic The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. And so now, in turn, Dogstar’s Matthew Zajac use James Robertson’s novel as the starting point for his new stage adaptation. For the most part, it lives up to its illustrious pedigree, providing a rollicking good ride, and holding onto the big questions while offering laughs aplenty along the way. It has the feeling of scenes plucked randomly from the novel and rearranged skilfully into a picaresque full length play. Perhaps inevitably, dealing with an unreliable narrator is a bit lost in dramatic form, and at nearly three hours long the play would have benefited from a more disciplined edit.
Gideon Mack is born into a religious world; a son of the manse, he’s brought up in a narrow and austere manner. Gradually as Gideon grows up we see the modern world encroach and as he becomes an adolescent, we see him move away from his father and the Church’s teachings into a more secular environment. By the time he gets to University he seems to have left the Church behind completely; it comes as something of a surprise when he decides on joining the clergy as a career choice. And yet, modern career choice it is rather than religious calling. Gideon has ideas of his own in taking the cloth. But even in the secular world there are mysterious goings on that defy explanation…
The cynical secularity of Gideon’s religious career is called into question when Gideon falls into a gully with a reputation for supernatural happenings in his parish of Monimaskit and meets the Devil. Zajac’s adaptation takes this incident and weaves it through the play with the rest of the story essentially conveyed in a series of flashbacks.
It’s a beautifully crafted ensemble performance with central performances by Matthew Zajac excelling as a wonderfully Machiavellian and mischievous Satan and Kevin Lennon as an amusing and ultimately rather dislikeable Gideon Mack. The always excellent Molly Innes heads up the supporting characters with Blythe Jandoo, Katya Searle, Fraser Sivewright, Anthony Strachan and Rebecca Wilkie making a good job of playing the remaining characters. Given the calibre of the performances and the ambition to produce drama that speaks to contemporary Scottish issues, it is hard to see why Dogstar have yet again been turned down for Creative Scotland funding.
The design is impressive – a pulpit that swivels to a hearth, heavy furniture on casters that move easily to conjure up scene changes. There is almost something of the religious mysticism in scenes that can appear and disappear before our eyes. But there are times when this proves a little clunky and distracting, and takes away too much of our attention from the story . At times it actually interferes with our understanding of the story: for example, the scene where Gideon’s erstwhile lover moves the pulpit and appears to be leaning on it listening into the conversation between Gideon and a female parishioner).
Music and sound direction by Aidan O’Rourke are strong, as is Kate Bonney’s lighting providing the essential light and dark of this Manichean study. While Megan de Chastelain’s direction pulls together the disparate elements, it nonetheless feels that some judicious editing combined with tighter direction could improve the staging to open the play out.
This is an ambitious attempt at an adaptation and while there’s lots to like, it feels like there’s a leaner tauter version trying to wrest its way onto the stage.
