Discussion: Alan McHugh

Discussion held with Alan McHugh, actor playing the part of Chae Strachan in the 2001 Prime Productions production of Sunset Song.

Interviewer
So, what's your general approach to acting?

Alan McHugh
My general approach to acting. It depends on the particular production you're doing and the director you're working with and the type of character you're playing, the type of style the piece is being done in and the type of character you're being asked to play, so it depends - you sort of tailor your methods or your approach depending on the production and style.

Interviewer
So how did you approach this production?

Alan McHugh
Okay, that's fine, that's all right. How did I approach the character of Chae?

Interviewer
Yeah, I guess so and generally the business of doing an adaptation when you're playing lots of parts and so on. Particularly Chae, but how did you manage the other stuff as well?

Alan McHugh
Eh, well, we'll talk about Chae first. My approach to Chae. I decided, probably after a week or so of rehearsals, that I would probably try and map out a journey for Chae's character from start to finish. One of the things about the play for Chae is that - see, Chae in the book is a fairly central character, starts at the beginning and follows a journey through to the end, and Chae's one of the constants throughout the play. He's there at the start and he's there until he dies at the end. Whereas, Chris Guthrie I'd say is the only other character like that because John Guthrie dies half way through, Ewan only comes half way through. Because as I say, Chae is a constant and one of the problems I found was that the character Chae in the play is not a constant. He does a bit of setting up at the start and then he's not really seen I'd say in full character mode until Act 2. Also, being an adaptation of the novel, and concentrating on Chris, and the other characters perhaps being satellites round her - the play's her story rather than Chae's story, or Guthrie's story, or Ewan's story. It's their stories as satellites of her. I thought I would just, instead of trying to look at all different aspects of Chae's character and how it affects every line he says or every approach he makes, I just thought I would just make a journey for Chae. We see Chae at the start as a member of the community, an upstanding man, a man who's using his principles, is fighting for his principles, and a very good-humoured socialist, a humanitarian member of the community, and basically show the change in him which comes about by the First World War. I thought, if you go into too many details, it becomes blurred; I thought I would just paint with broad brush strokes. Here is the character of Chae at the start up until the point that changes his life when he goes off to the war, where he questions everything that's ever happened to him. And so, up to that point he's you know Mr Community Member, Mr Lots of Fun, Mr Happy, Mr Friendly, da di da di da, with very strong beliefs, and his beliefs are so strong that he's prepared to go off and fight in France for them. And then everything he's ever believed in - socialism, religion, God, his community - is put into question by his experiences in the war.

And he probably never has the chance to reconcile that because he's killed before we have a chance to see how it finally affects him.

Interviewer
We see him half way through don't we?

Alan McHugh
Yes.

Interviewer
When that begins to have an effect; and then there's that question why he goes back, because he had to go back.

Alan McHugh
So that's what I did with the character of Chae. I thought I'll set him up and just show how he changes by the main event that changes his life.

Interviewer
I mentioned the other day that I don't particularly work on character, I don't think about character very much, I think about plots and about what's happening. Do you think about the character in that way? Do you develop a character?

Alan McHugh
Well, with Chae in particular, I took all the information from the novel and made notes about everything, but I am not - it's not set in stone because you can make all these decisions about your character and that's fine, but, as soon as you get to rehearsals with other actors, that changes depending on how they play things. It affects your character. So I use characters as a starting point. With Chae I picked out all the main things that were in the book about his character - what he says about himself, what other people say about him, and that forms an opinion of what sort of type of guy he is and how he reacts to stuff that was going on around him. But, I think as you said in rehearsals, you'll say what you're feeling in this moment, and I think that's the crucial thing. We can have a character history, you know, 14 pages long which the audience don't see and are never going to know, and it's how you feel in that moment, how you react in that moment, how you react rather than act. I think it's crucial and I use the character as a starting point and then put that character in the situation and see how it reacts with the real things that are going on around him.

Interviewer
Yes, for me it always becomes more complex. I've got ideas about things, a particular scene, or whatever, and then the moment when somebody else talks you suddenly realise that there's a lot more going on underneath or whatever. One good example of that for me was what you said in rehearsals - we were rehearsing the scene between you and Ewan, when he’d already died, and you talked about the emotion that Chae was feeling - it was something that I had never particularly thought about at the point because I've always been focusing on Ewan. But it transpires - and I think it's very important this - that an awful lot of emotion comes through you.

Alan McHugh
Uh uh.

Interviewer
It was a valuable moment for me.

Alan McHugh
I think character's very useful, but it can be very self-indulgent at times. I know some actors who will prepare and make all the decisions before the first day of rehearsals; the character would react this way, my character does this, you know, and I think that's very selfish and very self-indulgent, and it just makes a mockery of anything that any other actor says or does because they're not reacting to it. They've decided how they're going to react to this line on paper, regardless of how the other actor says it. Now that can't make sense. So you've got to be aware of the other people around you and how they're playing it - it has to become real rather than just rehearsed lines.

Interviewer
People say "acting's like listening, rather than thinking". And I think that's true.

Alan McHugh
Yes.

Interviewer
Is there anything you could say about your journey, about Chae's journey?

Alan McHugh
I think Chae's journey is very ... typical is not the word, it's just a lot of people at that time had that journey, similar to Chae's. They had their life, they had their family, everything they believed in, people were settled, they knew what their life was. Suddenly, something came from a different world outside - the First World War - and threw everything into question, destroyed communities, took the menfolk away, wiped out three generations of young boys and young men. And they might not all have been the same character as Chae but they all went for whatever reason off to France and millions of them never came back. And I think Chae is an example of the boys and young men of that time who were just taken away and how their disappearance or just being wiped off the planet changed the way of life for everybody.

I think also - one thing that we've talked about in this play is about change - nothing is sure but change. And Chae was quite happy to embrace change. He was happy to get in a threshing machine when John Guthrie wasn't. He was happy for the factors to come because he would say that's the way forward, give the working man more power and stuff like that. So he was happy to embrace change and he was convincing himself towards the end that this First World War, despite the atrocities and despite how wrong it was, it would bring about change. The common folk would win. Socialism would come in. It would end fighting in armies for ever. So, that's what kept him going. But again he's not been scared of that change; he was ready to embrace it.

Interviewer
But of course in many ways he's right. It didn't bring about the end of wars or socialism but it did provoke an awful lot of change - even as we see in the last scenes in the play.

Alan McHugh
Oh yes.

Interviewer
Chae was one of the few people in the play who has an understanding of the outside world anyway, wasn't he?

Alan McHugh
Yes.

Interviewer
Does that make a difference? Is that important?

Alan McHugh
Eh, I don't know how. I mean, it's one of these things if we want to go into character and character history, yeah, I could make long notes about Chae reading books and Chae being well-read and Chae spending time in the library, and he's well-travelled and he's well-read. But for the character of Chae in the play I don't think it's useful - it's important to the actor to know that ahead but I really don't think that any of that would transmit to an audience because it's not a play about that. For Chae, I mean, the character of Chae as it's written in the play isn't seen in that great depth. But, it helps me to know that, in that even if other actors are not aware of it, I can stand there and think, ‘Right, I'm saying this line with that bit of background’. And it'll hopefully just invest it with just a bit of truth and honesty, as opposed to a line that you don't know why you are actually saying it. So, again, that's character history background put into use... something like that.

Interviewer
Were there any scenes that were particularly difficult in terms of his journey?

Alan McHugh
Eh, difficult as an actor or difficult for the character?

Interviewer
I suppose difficult as an actor - are there any ones that you find difficult to sort of find that path through?

Alan McHugh
No, I'm quite happy now. The whole conception that Chae seems to be introducing Guthrie [at the beginning of the play] that to me is very very useful because it means that I can set myself up in my head as, like, I'm the spokesman for this community, I'm the person that's welcoming the incomers, trying to make them welcome, telling everyone what's going on. And also I’m giving a bit of the information about how I feel about gentry, how I feel about them using the dafties as cheap labour. I've got a reason, every scene in the play I've got a reason for doing it and it makes sense to me, so it's not difficult as an actor to do it. Once you find your reason for doing it and your journey through it.

Interviewer
It always seems to me that he's kind of committed fully to Kinraddie, isn't he? He's been abroad and he's done other things but now he's decided he's there and he becomes very much almost Chris's father and, as you say, he introduces everybody to the village. There's something very solid about Chae I think in a way. He could have done other things but he's decided to be here. It's quite interesting.

Is playing the other parts - the factor, other little bits, the Speak parts - is that a problem, is that a challenge?

Alan McHugh
It's a challenge to - in the end, this is an insecurity thing that most actors have - my main problem, the thing that niggles at the back of my mind is are they going to know I'm not Chae? As an actor, that's one thing you desperately worry about. And I hate resorting to hats and funny walks and twitches and all that but there are lines that I've got which are definitely not Chae lines and you just want to make sure, you want to know that the audience know that you're not Chae at this point. So, no it's not a problem but I think the Speak is fairly well defined. The speak performs a great function in this play.

The challenge in this play, for me the main challenge in this play was adapting a novel which is 99 percent narrative in this case and trying to contrive drama out of a lot of narration. We've succeeded but that to me was the main challenge of this, making something that was narrative, breathing life into it, making it come to it, making it dramatic and interesting as opposed to the spoken word.

Interviewer
And how do you think we've done it?

Alan McHugh
Well I think we've done it by a variety of ways, by without actually changing the tense that the lines are written in, there are so many narrative lines, you know "Last week mother died in the greatest storm that every di da di da ..." instead of just standing up and narrating it to the audience as though you're reading it out the book, we're speaking it in the tense it's written but living it in the present, and it seems to be working. I wasn't sure if it was going to work at first and I struggled with it a wee bit at first, especially the storm scene, but again I found my way through it. I think that works now and it's combining two worlds. To me at the start I thought there would be the dramatic world and then the narrative world and I didn't - what we were doing was maybe trying to marry - or my head tried to marry too many things that would have blurred the edges but now I think it's clear. The challenge was to make that work.

Interviewer
On that, and it connects up with something later, it seemed to me that ten years ago there was an interest in that narrative style of theatre. That isn't the case now, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to move it away from that narrative where the actor doesn't seem to have an attitude to what he is saying, so in one way the actor is more involved. Do you think that's the case, that ten years ago it was different?

Alan McHugh
Yeah, I'm a great believer that everything goes in cycles and that'll come back in another ten years. Yes, it's just one of these things, everything goes in phases. This'll be out of fashion in another 3/4 years and we'll be back to physical theatre or something. I don't think it's anything I think about too deeply actually. Everything goes in cycles. And that's had its time and it'll come back in another few years. Nothing's true but change. There you are.

Interviewer
Does the play seem current?

Alan McHugh
Yeah, it's current in that the themes of this play, I think that the themes of this play are universal, eternal. I think that Gibbon in the novel and Alastair in the adaptation - they've told the story as it was at that time and human nature has been the same since time immemorial, and Kinraddie is a microcosm of the whole world. And the themes of the play and the rest of it and the types of characters and the problems in their lives and the things that are affecting them from outside are the same sort of things that affect us in everyday life in 2001, so to that extent although it is set nearly 100 years ago, the themes it addresses and the problems that are thrown up to the individuals in the play are identical to the ones there are today. As well as, I do think it's a political play in that it addresses politics, the politics of war, the politics of industrial revolution and change, but also personal politics, the gender thing, and that's as relevant today as it was then.

Interviewer
Somebody said to me that they thought the story was mythic. Does that make sense to you?

Alan McHugh
I know what you mean, yes. Themes are eternal, if you go back to the Greeks and stuff like that, I mean those plays still works today, those themes are still eternal, you know, you don't have to set them in the year 2000 to make them work; they're still relevant.

Is it mythic? I'm not convinced about that.

Interviewer
It's quite a big claim isn't it?

Alan McHugh
It is a big claim. I think it's a story. It's a story that works. It's no more than that and you can apply a million labels to it but if it works, it works, and if it disnae, it disnae. It doesn't matter what label you apply to it.

Interviewer
All right. Good. Do you feel Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Alastair Cording have written complex and real female characters or are they stereotypical?

And maybe male characters as well, since you're a male?

Alan McHugh
I feel Lewis Grassic Gibbon has written fully-rounded real believable characters and that's obvious because I'm sure they're all probably more than 90% based on real people that he knew. And that comes across. As for Alastair, Chris in the play is written - I would say Chris and John Guthrie are the ones that are the most fleshed out, rounded characters and that's fine. I think the other characters are not as well-rounded and fleshed out and that's fair enough because it's an episodic thing and it's a story of journey and these characters only come into the play when they affect her journey or vice versa. And from that point of view, it's then the actor's job to flesh them out and make them believable, and make them work.

So I think, yes, he's written real believable people. I don't think in any way they're stereotypical; I think they're typical of people in Kinraddie; and we said it earlier, I think it is a microcosm of the whole world. You meet nice people, you meet bad people, you meet good guys, you meet funny guys, you get Socialists, you get Tories, whatever. But you get that in any society, any job you'll do there's usually the same sort of group of people. Instead of them being stereotypical, I just think they're typical of any society, of any group of people, that live together. And none of them stick out as not working and not being believable. And I think most of the other characters, while they may have been written slightly two-dimensionally, in the two-dimensional sense, just because of the amount of stuff they have to do, not as much as compared with the Chris character, but I think they all come across as three-dimensional.

Interviewer
And, just from the other side of it, the next question is do you think the characters are forced into stereotypical roles by events or are they creditable in the play? I mean, within the world of Kinraddie, do you think people there have stereotypical views of each other?

Alan McHugh
No, I think they might all have typical stereotypical views of each other. I mean a kind of labelling and pigeon holes or a person is such and such so you just - that person is a socialist or blah blah blah blah; that's just a label - you just see that one side of them, that facet, then it becomes stereotypical; it's when you see the other facets of their life they become real.

I mean, with Chae, the people that don't know him are the people that don't want to do more than scratch the surface, will just say "He's a socialist", "He's a loudmouth", "He's one that stands up at meetings, well laugh at him"; so to that extent, yes. But again that's human nature be it in the play or be it in real life; some people don't want to go any deeper than the surface, keep it superficial, and if people look at it in the superficial way they're going to be looking at in a stereotypical way, they'll just give one label to them.

Interviewer
That's what happens with the Speak....

Alan McHugh
That's what I was about to say and I think the Speak works by being slightly caricatured, by being stereotypical, like they are the nebs, they are the gossips, and that's a stereotypical role, it's almost like a commedia dell arte character, and I think that works perfectly in Speak. Everyone else is real and believable and fleshed out and rounded and the Speak are caricatures.

Interviewer
And we ask the audience to laugh quite a lot don't we?

Alan McHugh
Yes.

Interviewer
We are telling them, ‘They are stereotypical so laugh at them’.

Good. Next question: do marriage and experience of family life affect your characters?

Alan McHugh
How do marriage and experience of family life - in my marriage and experience of family life?

Interviewer
No. All right, well tell me about that. I'm fascinated to know.

Alan McHugh
I was just going to say how does my marriage and experience of family life affect the character? Well, It's kind of hard to say because where do you join that character who’s married and decisions have been made and you're on that journey. It's almost like you see people in the novel at different stages of their married life; you see Chris and Ewan, and you know, the youngness and the darkness and the beautifulness of them falling in love which is the best thing in the world. And then you also see people in the later stages of life, like Chae and Kirsty. You don't know much about their married life but it's hinted that it's not as perfect as it might be, but he's there and they're sticking by each other and that sort of thing. They’ve made that commitment, you'll see it through good times and bad times and take the ups and downs and you will never ever, for any married life be it five years, ten years life, you will never - you might love the person for the rest of your life, but you will never be in love every day like you are in that first year.

Interviewer
Yes. And that's shown in the play isn't it?

Alan McHugh
Yeah, I think it is. And John Guthrie and Jean Guthrie as well. You know, it's that initial attraction that's brought them together, and then, whatever happens in life, it changes and then those lines about ‘My dour keen man’ and ‘This one year in Blawearie has sown a bitterness in my heart’. Things affect things and physical things like Jean's - it's a physical pain and a mental pain and she can't endure any more children and that affects their marriage. So yes, I think it's a very important thing, relationships in marriage, you know how it affects people and how it changes their decisions in life and the characters around them.

Interviewer
Are there any characters you would describe as romantic hero or heroine or symbolic martyr.

Alan McHugh
None whatsoever.

Interviewer
Do you understand what those words mean? Romantic hero?

Alan McHugh
Well, you could put, if it was done in a different way, somebody could have accused Ewan of being a symbolic martyr in that you know, he's given up his life and he's happy to give up his life because it's the only way to you know prove his love you know and try to win...

Interviewer
What about Long Rob?

Alan McHugh
Long Rob? Yes. But I don't believe he's a symbolic martyr. And I don't believe - he's not a martyr. He's doing it because he believes it.

Interviewer
No, he ...

Alan McHugh
Yeah, a martyr does it for other people. Rob does it for himself.

Interviewer
And he's made into a martyr by ...

Alan McHugh
... by other people. Yeah, martyrdom's a hellish thing; it's quite often thrust upon you when you don't want it and I don't think there's any romantic heroes in it. The only romantic hero in it - no, no, I don't think they come close to romantic heroes.

Interviewer
In fact they are unromantic heroes.

Alan McHugh
Heroes in their own way but they're not romantic. Romantic gives it a sort of sentimental thing. There's nothing sentimental about this. This is shown warts and all.

Interviewer
Do you think women are powerful in this society? In the play society?

Alan McHugh

Yeah. Under the surface, they are. It's obviously a male-dominated society. At that time there was the man you know, holding all the cards, seen to be holding all the cards but I think when you go behind closed doors in these societies ... It's one of these things you know, you never know what goes on behind closed doors, but you can be sure to a large extent that women ruled the roost a lot at the time behind closed doors. That probably still holds today. But no, out in the open, in the fields, from a physical point of view, you have to get the hard graft done and therefore the respect and your place in society that comes from that, it's a sort of male-dominated society; but they need the women.

Interviewer
But when Chris asserts her independence and her own power, is that shocking to people because she does it publicly?

Alan McHugh
I think because she does it publicly, because she's so young to do it, and I think just because expectations - everybody around her is expecting her to just to, not wilt, but just to go along with tradition. ‘This is what you do now, you'll go and live with Uncle Tam, you will find a nice farmer.’ She just flaunts everything that's thrown at her, be it from people like the Speak, be it from her Uncle and Aunt, her family, or be it from the establishment like Mr Semple, the lawyer. They all expect her - much as Semple says "It's in your hands now". I don't think he expects her to do it. So, I think she just wants everything that is tradition and the norm at that point.

Interviewer
And is her youth an issue? If she had been ten years older it wouldn't have been quite so shocking.

Alan McHugh
I don't know what age Kirsty is when she marries Chae, when she gets pregnant by Chae, but if it had been her, if it had been somebody like Kirsty who was supposed to be on the shelf without much hope of marriage and had suddenly come into money, I don't think people would have raised an eyebrow if Kirsty had decided to make a life for herself. But it's that sort of thing as well - What do you know, you're too young, how can you make decisions, we'll make decisions for you, we're the lawyers, we're your aunt and uncle. It's flaunting everything in their faces.

Interviewer
Do you feel your characters are oppressed?

Alan McHugh
I don't think so. I don't think Chae is oppressed at all. I think the people in general live their own lives, and they get on with it and they're only as oppressed as they allow themselves to be. I don't think Chae's oppressed; although he fights for what he believes in and he wants change and he thinks this is wrong and that's wrong, he still gets on with it and he makes the most of his life and does what he can. He'll fight it without being oppressed. He'll fight it for the sake of change rather than thinking they've beaten him and he's fighting against something that he can't beat. So I don't think Chae feels oppressed at all. I think it gives him something to live for and fight for.

Interviewer
You're a musician, you wrote a lot of the music; is the use of music important in the play and how has it affected your work on it?

Alan McHugh
Yes, I think the music, and dance if you want to put it in as well, but the music is important to this because that was part of that community life there. It's a very strong ongoing theme in the book, that music, get-togethers and music was how they celebrated, was how they let off steam, was how they enjoyed themselves, and we're trying to give a view of what life at certain times might be like up there. So I think it's important to show that, not just for the sake of playing couthy, wee bothy tunes but to show this is what they did at weddings to celebrate, this was how they relaxed.

Interviewer
And that wedding scene we devised to do that, to bring that out ...

Alan McHugh
Yep. And as for Chae's character, he is a musician and he was a very sort of passionate guy for life and if you're passionate about life I don't think you can help being caught up in the sort of vibes that music gives you, and that's what drives him along as well.

Interviewer
One last question. Is Sunset Song a nationalistic play?

Alan McHugh
No, I don't think so. I think it's an internationalist play. I think Kinraddie is a microcosm of the whole world; these relationships, these difficulties, these themes, the characters and the problems, you get in any community, any workplace, any country throughout the world and I think that's one of the reasons it works because it's something that everyone can recognise. I just think it's a human piece, an internationalist piece, and to say it's nationalistic as far as Scots is concerned, I see nothing nationalistic in it at all.

Interviewer
Good. Thank you very much Alan McHugh.

Discussion: