Scotland’s theatres are well and truly open to all manner of shows in February. Here are some that shouldn’t be missed.
When Billy Met Alasdair
Theatre Royal, Dumfries, 7 February; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, 13 February; Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, 21 February; Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, 27 February; Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 28 February; Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 28 March.
Alan Bissett’s speculative conversation between Billy Connolly and Alasdair Gray at the launch of Gray’s novel, Lanark, in 1981 at Glasgow’s original arts lab, the Third Eye Centre was a hit on the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bissett brings two artistic greats to life with the sort of imagination used in his novels alongside a fearless performative flair. Bissett fans might also want to head over to the Memorial Theatre, Arbroath on February 20th for the last ever performance of Moira in Lockdown, the third and final part of The Moira Monologues, in which Bissett dons the mantle of the hardest woman in Falkirk.
Auntie Empire
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 8-9 February. Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 12-14 February.
This new satire by Julia Taudevin looks set to be the wild card of this year’s Manipulate festival of visual theatre that opened in Edinburgh last week and runs until February 10th. Working with clown Tim Licata and her husband playwright Kieran Hurley, who makes up the other half the Disaster Plan company, Taudevin, has created Auntie Empire, a quintessentially English matriarch who resembles a cross between Margaret Thatcher and the Queen. First created in a ten-minute scratch performance at Manipulate 2025, Taudevin’s character is a grotesque and horribly familiar creation that travels to Glasgow next week for more of the same.
The Events
Cumbernauld Theatre, 12 February; Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 19-21 February; Dundee Rep, 25 February; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 27-28 February.
This latest tour of the Wonder Fools company’s powerful revival of David Greig’s 2013 play about the aftermath of a school shooting sees a new choir formed for each venue of the tour to perform on stage alongside actors Claire Lamont and Sam Stopford. Lamont plays the priest and choir leader who attempts to keep a broken community together in the face of the tragedy after surviving the attack. Jack Nurse’s production was last seen in 2024, and remains a poignant and life-affirming reminder of how a collective spirit can help heal through music.
House of Lies
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 14 February.
Playwright George Byatt is one of Scottish theatre’s great unsung heroes, whose poem play, The Clyde is Red, in which the people of Glasgow learn to walk on water, won a Prix Italia award. This rehearsed reading of Byatt’s final play prior to his death in 1996 is directed by his son, actor Andrew Byatt, as part of Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Winter Words Festival. Its moving elegy to mortality and loss stars Simone Lahbib, Ceit Kearney and Byatt himself in the first public presentation of his father’s work since House of Lies premiered in Edinburgh more than thirty years ago. Hopefully this should lead to a long overdue revival of Byatt’s rich poetic canon.
Saint Joan
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 14-28 February.
George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 play about Joan of Arc, was probably last seen on the Citizens’ Theatre stage back in 1970 in a production by the theatre’s then recently appointed artistic director, the late Giles Havergal. More than half a century on, Shaw’s play is reimagined for today by director/designer Stewart Laing in a stripped back, close up fashion in the theatre’s new Studio space. Given Laing’s history at the Citz and elsewhere of radical reinventions of the classics, one should expect a refreshingly audacious take on how a teenage girl who led France to victory in the Hundred Years War and ended up being canonised. As a hint of what to expect, Laing’s version also features a new short film by Adura Onashile in response to Shaw’s epilogue.
Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile
His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 17-21 February; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 24-28 February; Festival Theatre, 24-28 March.
There have been multiple adaptations of Agatha Christie’s 1937 novel prior to Ken Ludwig’s newish stage version, As fans will know, the story sees Belgian detective Hercule Poirot embark on a holiday cruise, only to find himself in a mire of skulduggery amongst a rogues gallery of Christie’s grotesques. Christiephiles will already be aware that the novelist’s own stage version first appeared at Dundee Rep in 1944 under the title, Hidden Horizon, prior to a West End run as Murder on the Nile before finally settling for its best known title on Broadway.
Waiting for Godot
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 20 February-14 March.
Samuel Beckett’s twentieth century classic is brought to life by Matthew Kelly and George Costigan in the Citz’s new main stage production. Beckett’s darkly comic piece of existential vaudeville has long attracted major actors to playing his double act, and Kelly and Costigan’s longstanding friendship and working relationship going back half a century should be a boon to this co-production between the Citz, Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre and Bolton Octagon.
Someone’s Knockin’ at the Door
Oran Mor, Glasgow, 23-28 February, then tours in March.
Glasgow’s lunchtime theatre institution, A Play, a Pie and a Pint, returns with a season of eighteen plays opened by Milly Sweeney’s new piece in which a couple played by Jonathan Watson and Maureen Carr look back at the time in the 1970s when they went to the Mull of Kintyre in search of Paul McCartney’s house. Do they find him, and if so, does he let them in? Find out in Glasgow, or else when Sally Reid’s production tours to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Pitlochry in March.
One Day: The Musical
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 27 February-19 April.
David Nicholls’ 2009 novel charting the lives and times of two Edinburgh University graduates after they meet on St. Swithin’s Day 1988 has already been adapted into Lone Sherfig’s 2011 film and a Netflix series a decade later. David Greig’s brand new stage musical brings Nicholls’ story back home with a songbook by Nashville singer-songwriting duo Abner and Amanda Ramirez, who for the last two decades have released records under the name Johnnyswim. The demand for this co-production with the Melting Pot company has already seen an extra two weeks added to its run. Book early, as they say.
Medea
Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, 27 February; Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 28 February, then on tour throughout March and April.
Bard in the Botanics comes out to play early this year, moving indoors for a 25thanniversary revival of one of the best non-Shakespeare shows the company has ever done. Kathy McKean’s new version of Euripides’ Greek revenge tragedy sees Nicole Cooper return in the title role of Gordon Barr’s Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland winning production for an extensive tour of one of the most thrilling shows around.
The Herald, February 7th 2026
ends
Comments