Scotsman

The value of graft and the cheapness of life

by Joyce McMillan

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Brilliant site-specific theatre-maker David Leddy offers us a sharp, bitter and haunting reminder of a Victorian world in which human life was discarded as lightly as any other cheap commodity. Set in the Citizens' Theatre when it first opened, at the turn of the 1880s, Sub Rosa makes brilliant use of the building's backstage and hidden spaces – from the dusty places under the main stage to the shabby glamour of the old upper circle – to tell the story in five monologues of its unseen heroine, a music-hall singer called Flora McIvor, and her doomed attempt to free the theatre's artists from the rule of their sadistic manager, Hunter.

There's a magnificent feast of Scottish acting on view here, as stars including Alison Peebles, Finlay Welsh and Louise Ludgate glitter like cracked diamonds against the dusty dark, and the visual and aural effects are often stunning. And as for what it says – well, we are accustomed to the idea that human life is cheap. But it's a reality with which most of us in this country no longer have to live, from day to day; and for that at least, in the flawed Scotland of 2009, we can perhaps be grateful.

23rd January 2009