The Matter of Scotland: Try, try and try again.

PG Wodehouse, who was only the twentieth century’s greatest English-language novelist, once remarked that there existed just two ways to write: “One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.”

I feel something similar about theatre. I can – and do – enjoy a comedy or farce and, blimey, there’s always room for laughter in this – or any other – world. But, in general, I prefer my theatre punishing and draining and liable to leave you exhausted and feeling like the marrow’s been sucked from your bones. I don’t go to the theatre to be entertained. I want to be appalled – and, yes, occasionally cheered – by humanity in all its many forms.

Rona Munro’s trilogy of history plays about the lives of King James I, II and III of Scotland is the centrepiece of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival.