A Hamnavoe Man
a
promenade performance celebrating the life and work of GMB.
Set in Stromness, George's 'Hamnavoe'.
Full review of this event can be seen at Northings - Highlands and Islands Arts Journal.
Click here
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The dramatised story of
GMB's life and work wended its way through the streets of Stromness led by
the Narrator, a sort of everyman wearing a GMB duffle coat, and Cat - 'shall
we slink in the dark nooks of Hamnavoe ...?'
Scene 1: The Flattie Bar. The opening scene took place in the Flattie
Bar in the Stromness Hotel, with William and
Mareon Clark, in 1596 the first bar keepers in Stromness, having trouble with a
drunken sailor.
William: 'Mareon, the truncheon quick!'
The hand of Pedro flashed twice,
A piece of sunlight fell from the beard of Sven.
Mick (Irishman): 'They'll do bloody murder. Hooray!'
Mareon's mouth was a mute hand-plucked harp.
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Scene 1 (cont): John Brown meets Mhari Sheena Mackay
at a dance.
And round they circle, this time a waltz.
But a kiss, under the streetlamp?
Sinful, dangerous. 'I won't
Walk out with that man again...'
John and Mhari marrried in 1910.
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Scene 2: The Pierhead. The action moves to the Pierhead, traditionally a place
for gossip, and the Narrator introduces the audience
to the Old Women, united in grief at the loss of a fisherman.
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Old Women at the Pierhead.
Go sad or sweet or riotous with beer
Past the old women gossiping by the hour,
They'll fix on you from every close and pier
An acid look to make your veins run sour.
.......
But I have known a gray-eyed sober boy
Sail to the lobsters in a storm, and drown.
Over his body dripping on the stones
Those same old hags would weave into their moans
An undersong of terrible holy joy.
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Scene 3: Clouston's Pier where George was born in 1921. A young GMB showing an early interest in writing -
already wearing his trademark scarf.
A child in a sea-close, the salt on his tongue
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GMB as a teenager, fishing for sillocks off Clouston's Pier.
Football [under the bench], which he excelled, at became impossible after
early illness.
A boy on a pier, taut dripping line
and a twist of silver (a sillock) |
Scene 4: The Town Hall. The second indoor scene with atmospheric
lighting, where
children and adults weave words, dance and music into a mystic pattern of
circles, representing the timeless rhythms of life and death. Redemption,
with the figures of Christ and Magnus the Martyr, is at the heart of the
circle, and the prayer echoes
‘St Magnus, keep for us a jar of light,
beyond sun and star.’
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Scene 5: Arctic Whaler, the
old inn in an old sea
close, a scene devoted to memories of GMB's father John Brown, Stromness
postman and tailor.
My father passed with his penny letters
Through closes opening and shutting like legends
When barbarous with gulls
Hamnavoe's morning broke.
He quenched his lantern, leaving the last door.
Because of his gay poverty that kept
My seapink innocence
From the worm and black wind:
And because, under equality's sun,
All things wear now to a common soiling,
In the fires of images
Gladly I put my hand
To save that day for him.
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Children from Stromness Primary school acting the Market Square scene.
Cat is still prowling along the piers and closes.
Scene
6: Alfred Square. GMB's recollections of happy childhood pursuits form
the basis of this scene. Anything that meant escape from the 'prison' of
school was pure happiness.
No school today! We drove our gig to the town.
Grand-da bought us each a coloured balloon.
The booths huddled like mushrooms along the pier.
I ogled a goldfish in its crystal cell.
Round every reeling corner came a drunk.
The children encounter Ikey the vagrant.
Ikey
Faa, a vagrant, stumbles into the market scene, a bottle in his hand, the
harder side of life contrasting with the innocence of childhood.
A ditch awakening.
A bee in my hair.
Egg and honeycomb,
Cold fare.
A sharp wet wind
and my bum bare.
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Children, Ikey and Fiddler
on the steps of Mayburn Court
Scene
7: Mayburn Court where George lived from 1968 till his death in
1996. In his drunkenness, Ikey contemplates mortality.
I, Ikey Faa, being of whole and sound mind (nobody thinks it but me),
do hereby bequeath and leave my possessions
to the following persons ....
Item: the birds of the isle, hawk and swan,
eider and blackbird and dotterel, to the child John Swenson that gave me and
the birds a bite to eat in last winter snow
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Cat
Cat watches
from the side.
The Narrator speaks of the Silence at the heart of all things, the Silence
that George considered to be the perfect poem. Carve
the runes
Then be content with Silence. |