Burns On The Solway

By Catherine Czerkawska

Burns on the Solway is a one act poetic drama by award winning Scottish playwright, Catherine Czerkawska. It imagines the last few weeks in the life of Scottish poet Robert Burns, down on the Solway Coast in beautiful Dumfries and Galloway. It is an exploration of the enduring relationship between Rab and his wife Jean, a play about love and friendship, about sensuality and violence, about betrayal and – perhaps most of all – a play about endings.

It was first produced in February 2006, at Glasgow's Oran Mor, as part of the spring A Play, A Pie and a Pint lunchtime drama season of that year, and played to packed houses.

 

It was directed by Michael Emans, with Donald Pirie as an uncannily authentic Robert, Clare Waugh as a wonderful, passionate Jean Armour and Celine Donoghue as the musician, playing a variety of instruments including folk fiddle.

 

The play inspired Czerkawska's novel, The Jewel (Saraband) about the life and times of Jean Armour. 

 

'Michael Emans's bright, lively production makes the most of Czerkawska's poetic text. Donald Pirie is a mercurial and unhinged Burns, all puppydog eyes and impulsive gestures. Clare Waugh, meanwhile, invests Jean with feistiness and passion, her face aflame with devotion as Rab is led by his crotch to other women's beds. If you wonder why she puts up with such treatment, it's a question many women hooked on charm and charisma are still asking today. '
Neil Cooper, The Herald, February 2006

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wordarts
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502230898

Catherine Czerkawska

Catherine Czerkawska is a critically acclaimed writer of long and short fiction, non-fiction and plays. Her novels include The Curiosity Cabinet, The Physic Garden, Bird of Passage and The Jewel, about the life of Robert Burns’s wife, Jean Armour.  In 2019 Contraband published A Proper Person to be Detained, an intriguing exploration of family history that takes us from 19th-century Ireland to the industrial heartlands of England and Scotland. Following on from this, The Last Lancer is a personal account of loss and survival in Poland and Ukraine, a book with a tragic resonance, given the current situation in that country.  Catherine's stage plays include Wormwood, about the Chernobyl disaster, and Quartz, both commissioned by Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. She has also written more than 100 hours of drama for BBC Radio 4. She spent four years as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland and when not writing, collects and deals in the antique textiles that occasionally find their way into her fiction.

Book preview

BURNS ON THE SOLWAY

––––––––

Catherine Czerkawska

Burns on the Solway is Copyright © Catherine Czerkawska (2011).

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, performed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the author or her agent. The right of Catherine Czerkawska to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her.

Contents

ABOUT THE PLAY

CHARACTERS

BURNS ON THE SOLWAY

ABOUT THE PLAY

The play premiered at the Oran Mor, Glasgow, in February 2006, as part of A Play, A Pie and a Pint lunchtime drama season.

It was directed by Michael Emans, with Donald Pirie as Robert, Clare Waugh as Jean and Celine Donoghue as the musician.

It is a poetic one act drama which imagines the last few weeks in the life of Scottish poet, Robert Burns, down on the beautiful Solway Coast. It is an exploration of the enduring relationship between Rab and his wife Jean, a play about love and friendship, about sensuality and violence, about betrayal and – perhaps most of all – a play about endings. It was a play that preceded and to a great extent inspired Catherine Czerkawska’s later novel, The Jewel, exploring the life and times of Jean Armour herself.

‘Michael Emans's bright, lively production makes the most of Czerkawska's poetic text. Donald Pirie is a mercurial and unhinged Burns ... Clare Waugh, meanwhile, invests Jean with feistiness and passion, her face aflame with devotion as Rab is led by his crotch to other women's beds. If you wonder why she puts up with such treatment, it's a question many women hooked on charm and charisma are still asking today.’

Neil Cooper, The Herald, February 2006

CHARACTERS

Robert Burns – As the play begins, he is nearing the end of his life. He is thin and ill, but still an intensely ‘alive’ man so that for the sections of the play when he is younger and fitter, this should not be beyond the bounds of audience credibility.

Jean Armour - Robert Burns’ wife. She is plump and untidy but pretty as