How to Achieve Redemption as a Scot Through the Medium of Braveheart

As a teenager, Rachael Clerke found herself eschewing her Scottish identity, one that to her seemed inward looking and closed-minded, instead choosing to emphasise the diverse branches of her family tree. But, as she entered her twenties, Clerk found her Scottishness reasserting itself. How to Achieve Redemption… charts her reconciliation with her national identity and asks what exactly it means to be Scottish.

Armed with a trusty PowerPoint slideshow, Clerke embarks on a journey through a landscape of Scottish archetypes. Using a series of charmingly bad costumes and video clips, she embodies a triumvirate of famous faces as she tries to find the person who best embodies Scottishness. Her choices: William Wallace, Alex Salmond and, curiously, Donald Trump. 

Enjoyable and often thoughtful though this is, How to Achieve Redemption... doesn't always work. The structural difficulty in trying to define a whole national identity, much less her own identity, through the prism of just three people is never quite overcome. This is a show that’s strongest when it focuses on the personal and is crying out for a greater focus on Clerke’s own story, her thoughts and conclusions.

Moreover, much like Clerke’s Alex Salmond caricature, How to Achieve Redemption… is rather flabby around the mid-section. A little more discipline in the writing and some ruthless editing would do How to Achieve Redemption a great service. But ultimately, with a charmingly DIY aesthetic and a stirring, Braveheart-inspired finale that manages to be both sentimental and knowingly silly, it’s difficult not to caught up in this well-meaning and at times insightful production.