“How little I am touched by the desire for accuracy,” confesses Robert Louis Stevenson in the dedication to his 1886 novel Kidnapped, set in Scotland in the aftermath of the failed Jacobite rebellion around the year 1751. It’s in this same spirit that Isobel McArthur and Michael John McCarthy adapt Stevenson’s story for the stage for the National Theatre of Scotland. The publicity line, “A swashbuckling romcom adventure”, hints at one of the variations they play on Stevenson’s themes, romance not having been a feature of the original – or at least not overtly.
Just as in Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), their previous, highly successful (and much wittier) translation from page to stage, McArthur and McCarthy introduce contemporary pop songs and a framing device that recontextualises the original. A group of female servants told Jane Austen’s story from a below-the-stairs perspective (characterised by boots, frocks and minimal props). Here, the tale is introduced by Frances, Stevenson’s older, previously divorced American wife. Not so much a “tomboy”, as she was called by Stevenson’s disapproving mother, but, in her own words, “a tom-man”, helping her illness-weakened husband to write a tale inspired by her own adventures – also by her having fallen “inconveniently, fatally in love” with him. This love is reflected in the parallel relationship between ingenue and Whig David (“Davie”) Balfour and swashbuckling Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart.
A pantomime-inspired first half sees off kidnapping, murder (made light of), shipwreck and battle in messy disorder. After an underwater transformation scene, the second half is less frenetic, taking time to develop the relationship between Ryan J Mackay’s Davie and Malcom Cumming’s Alan (touching in their vulnerability). The problem is that the presentation, as co-directed by McArthur and Gareth Nicholls, lets silliness dominate the tone, giving the action a superficial quality. Frances’s hints about her life seem to offer something deeper, not realised. In a 10-strong, cartoon-vivid actor-musician cast, Kim Ismay’s Frances is a commanding, three-dimensional presence.
Kidnapped is at the Royal Lyceum theatre, Edinburgh, until 22 April, and tours until 20 May
