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When Billy Met Alasdair

Scottish Storytelling Centre

Four stars

 

When Alan Bissett steps up to play the two heroes of Scottish culture who give his new solo play its title, for much of the next hour he switches between telling the life stories of each. From Billy Connolly’s move from the shipyards to folk clubs to international stardom, a quick pair of glasses later and we see Alasdair Gray’s visionary life of writing and painting. The latter was finally recognised in 1981 when Gray was 47 with the publication of his novel, Lanark. 

 

This criss-crossing primer is framed by Connolly’s star studded sixtieth birthday bash, which Bissett imagines with a showbiz sweep that couldn’t be further from Gray’s ascetic existence. Connolly relates how the two men met at the launch of Lanark at Glasgow arts lab the Third Eye Centre. We know this is true from the photograph beamed out behind Bissett that shows the two men together. This image was taken by George Oliver and was later gifted to Bissett by his friend, novelist Rodge Glass, who was given it by Gray in lieu of payment while working as his personal assistant.

 

Oliver’s photograph was the spark for this co-commission from the Alasdair Gray Archive and Glasgow Comedy Festival, which Bissett brings to life beautifully enough through the biographies and the imagined conversation between the two men. When Bissett steps out of character and addresses the audience as himself, however, it goes beyond any notions of fanboy tribute act to create a moment that becomes the heart of the play.

 

So, while Bissett’s well-studied homage captures the essence of both its subjects, Kirstin McLean’s production becomes something more than a portrait of the artists as young and not so young men. In Bissett’s hands, it becomes a study of the working class male artist in all its mix of class hopping ambition, imposter syndrome, self-destructive tendencies, and, in Gray’s case, what feels like endless poverty. 

 

Bissett recognises all this in his own trajectory as a writer and performer in a way that is brutally honest even as it gives him inspiration enough to keep going just as Connolly and Gray did before him. That picture of these two towering figures, it seems, says a lot more than words in a brilliant study of what it means to be an artist.

 

Until August 23, 8.30pm.


The Herald, August 6th 2025

 

Ends 

 

 

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