Twist and Burns

As Burns Night approaches, Mark Fisher ponders how to explain the maverick appeal of the Ayrshire poet

There was much to be said about Alan Cumming’s solo turn in the 2022 Edinburgh International Festival. In the guise of Robert Burns, the actor took to the King’s Theatre stage in moody monochrome. He was backed by enormous video projections, accompanied by the edgy sounds of Anna Meredith and put through his dance-theatre paces by choreographers Steven Hoggett and Vicki Manderson. The show, which was called Burn rather than Burns (the Ayrshire poet was a singular talent), presented the Scottish icon as a womanising maverick who was constantly on his uppers.

Not everyone liked it, but even its enthusiasts (I was one) were left with an awkward question: why? What was the point of dedicating National Theatre Of Scotland resources to this story? Whatever you thought of the actor’s dance moves, Tim Lutkin’s lights rippling over the auditorium or Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s austere design, and however watchable you found the whole thing, it was hard to argue that Burn had anything to say that hadn’t been said already.

In interviews, Cumming said he wanted to get to the man behind the smiling image staring out from every shortbread tin. That would be a laudable aim if our impression of the poet wasn’t already vexed. As national heroes go, Robert Burns is an awkward fit. He was a mason, a social climber, a father of illegitimate children, and a man who nearly joined the Jamaican slave trade. He was also a radical who expressed egalitarian sentiments in the voice of the ordinary citizen, not to mention writing a mean love song. The former Makar Liz Lochhead has called him both a ‘great poet’ and a ‘sex pest’ who could teach Donald Trump a thing or two about lockerroom talk. His poetry stands up, she argued, saying the real problem was the ‘prurient sentimentalising of him’ at longwinded Burns suppers. Perhaps his weakness, like his strength, is he can be all things to all people.

Revelling in its own contradictions, Scotland can’t resist championing such figures. A man described by the journalist Stuart Kelly, with eyebrows raised, as ‘a bit of a rascal, a little roguish, a naughty roister-doisterer’ seems to suit a nation torn between romanticism and irreverence. We love the way he is at once brilliant and disreputable.

For these reasons, the question of how to celebrate Burns remains unresolved. Should it be with an ‘immersive theatrical party experience’ called Le Haggis as part of the Big Burns Supper in Dumfries? Should it be by presenting him as a modern-day social-media star, ‘gifted, passionate and flawed’, as it is in upcoming musical Burns? Or should it be with folkinfluenced acts such as The Twilight Sad and Kinnaris Quintet at Edinburgh’s Burns & Beyond? There are no wrong answers.

Big Burns Supper, Loreburn Hall, Dumfries, Friday 13–Sunday 22 January; Burns, Edinburgh Playhouse, Friday 20 & Saturday 21 January; Burns & Beyond, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Thursday 26–Sunday 29 January.