Men Should Weep

You can understand, although Stewart herself never did, why the play became a favourite of the Left. It is a simmering depiction of poverty, of holding-it-all-together as it forever comes apart, it humanises its sufferers, there is bleak and essential humour, all of this is in a tradition that runs from Orwell to Paul Abbott. Indeed in many respects, Stewart’s Glasgow is reminiscent of Orwell’s “ghost city” in which the parallel stories of urban success unfold.

Outside the relative warmth of the extended Morrison family, urbanity is catastrophe. insufficiently planned, a place of joblessness, of brutish carnality, of loosened social ties. One of the few evocations of place is that of a collapsed burning building. Stewart’s strength lies in conveying the terrible loneliness of poverty, of being cut adrift from society. The scene in which an adumbrated appeal to the local corporation for housing assistance is dismissed as pure fantasy by Maggie, the shattered matriarch played with a harrowing tiredness by Sharon Small, is perhaps eerily prescient of our future - of a hamstrung, reduced and absent state.

And like Orwell’s 'urban ride' in Wigan Pier, Stewart’s perambulation is vividly related in the keenest of keen detail. The dialogue crackles with authenticity, the “Weegie” voice Stewart professed to loving for its versatility. “Aw naw!” she once sagely related, “on high doh, can be a cry of despair. an octave lower a keen of deepest sympathy”. Like a skilful sociologist of restrictive code, and an artist of vision, she creates a universe of language so distinct and utterly verisimilitudinous that we are immediately transported. The eminent comedian Karen Dunbar brings a mardy echtness to her neighbourly Mrs Harris,one of a clutch of strong performances.

Bunny Christie’s set, which uses sharp jazz-age neon to frame a beautifully detailed decaying tenement, all oozing rusty oranges and mottled greens, is not only smart for its combination of stylistic elan and grubby realism, but also for its understanding that the play is somewhat loose with its structure. The blocked grids look to instigate sectionality where the writing has none, and seems sometimes to lose its bearings in the tumbling intercourse.

But that is a minor complaint of a work of remarkable originality and care, in which a hardworking ensemble cast excels. If Ena Lamont Stewart was written out of history for being a woman, she at least was able to bequeath this masterly documentary, a play that deserves its career into the future as a work of compelling historical apprehension.

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