Before Vivien Heilbron got her teeth into the role of Chris Guthrie, Sunset
Song was a forgotten classic, relegated to the dustier reaches of the upper
shelves of the library. Then, in 1971, she starred in a BBC adaptation of
Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s unflinching story of a country girl on what we would
now call a journey of self discovery. It was a huge success, brought
Heilbron many more juicy offers and propelled the novel from obscurity to
the Higher English syllabus.
Fast forward almost four decades and Heilbron is still working as an
ambassador for the Mearns. The two-handed show Grassic Gibbon, which started
life in the author’s hometown of Arbuthnott and then moved to His Majesty’s
Theatre, Aberdeen, is now heading south for a run in Edinburgh. Together
with Michael McKenzie, Heilbron brings the story of Grassic Gibbon, who
produced 17 books before dying aged 33, to life on the stage.
It is a labour of love in several ways: in its first incarnation, at the Lewis
Grassic Gibbon Centre in Arbuthnott, the male part was played by the
Scottish actor David Rintoul. He and Heilbron are now married. But although
she is modest about her role in popularising Sunset Song and, by extension,
Grassic Gibbon himself, Heilbron takes her ambassadorial role very seriously.
Recalling the television series, she says: “It put him into profile, although
he should never have been neglected in any way. Lots of people knew about
him but he wasn’t popular reading.” How things have changed: in 2005, a
Scottish Book Trust poll voted Sunset Song the best-loved Scottish novel
ever. “Which is,” says Heilbron, “stunning. He’s an international writer,
he’s not just a Scottish writer — certainly not just a Mearns writer.”
This was not, she insists, all her own work. “I feel mainly it was Bill Craig,
the adaptor, and the production team and yes — thank you very much — because
I got to play Chris Guthrie, I must have had some input. It was a great
role. The whole thing was very unexpected: I didn’t have any connection with
that part of Scotland; the sound is completely different to anything I’d
picked up in Glasgow.
“By the time I came to film Sunset Song, I’d trained in London. I still had a
Scottish intonation but I didn’t sound particularly Scottish. The producer
at the BBC, Pharic MacLaren, was initially quite reluctant — he only really
warmed up when he saw the shot material.”
Heilbron worked hard to perfect the Mearns lilt with a tutor, the director
Moira Anderson, the rest of the cast and the population of south-east
Aberdeenshire to keep her right. “What was really helpful was filming it in
the right place, because you’re surrounded by the sound all the time. I’ve
always been interested in voice and accent and, reading the book, I started
to hear it in the kind of rhythms that he uses.”
Chris Guthrie, a complex, thoughtful woman whose sensuality shocked the
readers of 1930s, is a gift of a part. Heilbron is far from the first person
to be amazed that such a believable female character was written by a former
military man from the rural north-east. “That was what struck me when I
first read it. But he was very close to the women in his life — closer to
his mother, certainly, than he was to his father. Then there was the
extraordinary relationship with his wife Rae. They were so loving, so close,
such good mates as well as husband and wife. It was so sad for her that she
lost him when he was not yet 34.”
She is, says Heilbron, a universal character. “The story of Chris and the
people of the Howe of the Mearns is the story of the peasant everywhere. If
you’re lucky enough to have played her, it doesn’t go away — it’s written
with such insight.”
Heilbron does a bit of Chris in the Grassic Gibbon show — how could she not? —
but the drama is based on Grassic Gibbon’s own life. Born James Leslie
Mitchell, he was a dreamy lad in a community that preferred stamina and
stoicism to literature and ideas. Heilbron cherishes the memory of an
elderly lady she encountered while filming Sunset Song, who had been at
school with the young Mitchell. She slips effortlessly into her accent: “He
was aye sitting on the edge of a dyke reading a book.” This was said,
Heilbron recalls, “slightly disapprovingly”.
Grassic Gibbon left school at 16 and started work on the Aberdeen Journal. War
took him overseas: in the Royal Army Service Corps he served in Iran, India
and Egypt.In 1920, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force as a clerk, spending
some time in the Middle East. Back home in peace time, he married Rebecca
Middleton and moved to Welwyn Garden City before dying of peritonitis.
“With any great writer who dies when they are at not yet 34, you can’t help
but feel sadly about what might have been. He already had another series of
novels in the planning when he died. I still think there were things he
didn’t write — I’m surprised there wasn’t more poetry — and I think he would
have done all that, if he’d had time to do it. The awful thing was he died
of peritonitis which, these days, wouldn’t have taken him away. But there
was lot of stress in his life as well as a lot of happiness.”
For Jack Webster, who wrote the play, it is time for the man to step out from
behind his books. “Although Grassic Gibbon is the north-east’s greatest
literary figure, he was also a writer of international importance, whose
books were widely publicised in America,” he said. “The public may know his
books but they know very little about the man. This is why I wanted to put
on record his remarkable, if tragic, story.”
And who better than the woman who made Chris Guthrie a national heroine to do
it?
Grassic Gibbon is at His Majesty’s Theatre Aberdeen on November 6-7,
Theatre Royal Glasgow (Nov 8), Eden Court Inverness (Nov 9-10), Perth
Theatre (Nov 13-14), Festival Theatre Edinburgh (Nov 15), Webster Memorial
Theatre Arbroath (Nov 17), Adam Smith Theatre Kirkcaldy (Nov 18) and
Eastgate Theatre Peebles (Nov 19)
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