Michael Elder

“The Three Estaits is a puzzle. In its original form it's an eight-hour dramatised sermon written by Sir David Lindsay of the Mount for the young King James V advising him on the responsibilities of kingship and government. Its relevance today is a bit misty. The art in preparing it for a modern audience starts with the cutting down of the original text to a manageable size. This Robert [Kemp] did superbly well. He was also well served by his original cast in 1948 who breathed life into the stereotypical characters. But the main advantage for that production and the later ones up till and including 1959 was in its producer. Tony [Tyrone] Guthrie took a fairly verbose script and wrung glory out of it. Movement, pageantry, crashing music with dozens of trumpets, banners, mass entrances and exits through the audience, anything to delight they eye and stop people trying to make sense of the dialogue. 1959 was the last time Guthrie produced it. I think by then he'd had enough and felt he was churning out productions without anything new to say. The play has been revived since, of course, but each revival has inevitably been a shadow of Guthrie's production and sometimes a pale replica of Robert's script.”
― Michael Elder, What do You do During the Day?