Dog, Book, and Scandal by Bard Heads:

At the Edinburgh Fringe, I've just been to see Bard Heads: Dog, Book, and Scandal:  The write up drew me in, I think because I'm a bit of a sucker for alternative timelines and counterfactuals and this kind of 'what happened next?' story beguiles that same bit of mind. It said this:
"In Dog, Book and Scandal, Friar Laurence faces criticism over star-crossed lovers’ fiasco. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, Bard Heads catches up with Friar Laurence one year on from the tragedy. Written and performed by Richard Curnow"
Well, I enjoyed the performance. The actor (for 'tis a monologue in three main voices) comes over in the main character as a humane and likeable soul: a winsome performance. The other two characters are a bit cartooney but really they are the foil for the main character so that is not necessarily a fault. Some echoes and quotes from Romeo and Juliet form part of the text. The Shakespearean Tudor, however, doesn't fill the time and much of it is in a reasonably contemporary English (though at one or two points I wondered whether a more 'classic'-sounding phrase than "man up" might have have been found). However, to have attempted the whole thing in a Tudor-English style would almost certainly have been a mistake.

The play explores (spoiler alert!) how Friar Laurence is coping a year on in exile in Mantua where he's settled down into a useful existence as an apothecary's assistant (and helped prosper the business it seems). Richard Curnow, the actor, plays the apothecary for the purposes of setting up a dialogue with the friar; the apothecary being the voice of cynical godlessness (and also of a right to choose to die) poking and prodding the doubting, would-be-humanistic theist who is the friar. Perhaps there is a whiff of the pantomime villain about this character, but then, some of Shakespeare's characters have this at times and so I don't rate it a defect, necessarily. At the end of the play the friar has conceded to cynicism but has also bounced back somewhat from it. Faith has been tested to destruction but a resurrection of sorts also takes place - a more ambiguous faith but perhaps more hopeful.

I did feel it a shame that the meaning of faith was more fully explored: we get a tantalising glimpse of a move from a dogmatic faith which tries to act up to certainty towards a faith that is more about trust -though trust in what is where the ambiguity stays. Perhaps it needs to in order not to engender or collude with further versions of dogmatic faith?

I enjoyed the use of lines of the prayer "God be in my head..." to give a sense of a depth of faith to the friar that is not cartoonish but rather can be seen to be wide-ranging in the friar's piety, giving a sense of a real spirituality.

The other character produced for the play is that of Juliet's nurse. Again, she's a bit of a cartoon complete with rustic accent (which seemed to have linguistic features from the west country and the north east of England, though perhaps this was some move towards original pronunciation?). The nurse serves to situate the friar back into the Verona scene by being a representative voice of those who appreciate the friar and do not blame him for his part in the matter of the death of two star-crossed lovers. The nurse also serves (as a gossipy character) to give some of the narrative background.

I loved the dog of the title whom we never meet in person but the fact that it is called 'Jesus' gives a few little wry puns with a smidgeon of significance within the play -and it's nice that this is not overdone; just sitting there discreetly.

Altogether, I definite "go and see" if you're in Edinburgh at a little before 3pm on August 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, or 16.