Times of strife of various kinds take over Scottish stages this month, with working class lives very much to the fore as well as showbiz, spies and taking to the skies.
Windblown
Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 2 May; Eden Court, Inverness, 6 May; The Pavilion, Glasgow, 8-9 May; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, 14 May; Perth Concert Hall, 16 May.
Karine Polwart returns with her hugely successful fusion of storytelling and song inspired by a 200 year old tree at the Royal Botanic Garden. Featuring sound design by Pippa Murphy, stunning visuals by Jamie Wardrop and piano accompaniment by jazz pianist David Milligan, Polwart’s creation was described in The Herald’s five star review as ‘a work of monumental beauty’.
The High Life: The Musical – Still Living It!
Eden Court, Inverness until 2 May; Dundee Rep, 6-9 May; King’s Theatre, Glasgow, 12-23 May.
More than three decades on from Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson’s short-lived Scottish airline based sitcom, this stage version reunites the original cast to show it still has wings in a musical take on things co-written with Cumming and Masson’s natural heir in camp, Johnny McKnight. With Air Scotia about to be deScotified in a hostile takeover, this co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep Theatre in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts and Capital Theatres is a gloriously knowing flight of fancy.
Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In
Tron Theatre, Glasgow until 9 May; Aberdeen Arts Centre, 12-13 May; Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, 15 May; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 19-20 May; Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 22-23 May; Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, 26-27 May; Mull Theatre, Tobermory, 30 May; Cumbernauld Theatre, 5-6 June; Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, 9-10 June.
Plays about industrial strife are all the rage this month.This new play by Frances Poet is conceived with journalist Paul English for the National Theatre of Scotland, and based on the 1981 strike by women workers in the Greenock based Lee Jeans factory. Developed out of conversations with some of the 240 women involved in the strike, the play looks at how they stood up for themselves and each other over the seven-month dispute.
Sweat
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 2-16 May; Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 27 May-13 June.
Moving along the production line, this second production to grace the stage this month about industrial unrest sees the Citz in Glasgow and the Lyceum in Edinburgh join forces for a new production of American playwright Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play. First seen in 2015, Nottage’s drama sets out its store in Reading, Pennsylvania, where friends mourn the city’s decline in relation to the local factory where they used to work.
Sunny Afternoon
The Playhouse, Edinburgh, 5-9 May; Eden Court, Inverness, 12-16 May.
Moby may not think much of the Kinks, but if he ever opens his ears he could do worse than check out Joe Penhall’s musical biography of what is arguably the most mercurial of 1960s sired British pop groups. The Kinks’ first few years are brought to life in blazing fashion by the all singing, all dancing cast in Edward Hall’s touring revival of his West End smash hit that tells a story, not just of the Kinks, but of the shape of pop to come.
Sunset Boulevard: The Backstage Cut
Perth Theatre, 7-16 May.
Morag Fullarton’s genius in bringing Hollywood stories to the Scottish stage in a series of pocket sized epics runs on unabated in her look at Billy Wilder’s 1950 big screen classic of showbiz shenanigans. Fullarton takes the film’s already rich mythology and goes behind the scenes. Following Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut and It’s a Wonderful Life… Mostly, Fullarton’s clear love of the movies is explored with a sense of theatrical largesse that features the mighty Juliet Cadzow as Norma Desmond.
Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 8-23 May.
As a former Herald columnist, Ron Ferguson has long been a renaissance man. He is also known to be football daft, as his 1993 book that has inspired Gary McNair’s stage version concerning Ferguson’s beloved Cowdenbeath Football Club makes clear. A story of a prodigal’s return to a once thriving Fife mining town and the power of community is brought to life in James Brining’s production by Dawn Steele and Barrie Hunter, with music composed and performed by Ricky Ross. But when is someone going to put Ferguson’s brilliant biography of radical Glasgow minister Geoff Shaw on stage?
Kenmure Street
Oran Mor, Glasgow, 11-16 May; the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 19-23 May.
The story of the spontaneous community action that erupted five years ago when immigration authorities in Glasgow attempted to remove two residents from their homes on the city’s southside has become an inspiration. With events already documented on screen in Everybody to Kenmure Street, Simon Jay’s verbatim stage drama draws from interviews, news reports and eyewitness film footage to show what happened on a day that made history.
Educating Rita
Dundee Rep, 23 May-13 June.
Willy Russell’s play about a Liverpool hairdresser who transforms her life when she enrols in an Open University English Literature course has become a modern classic since premiering back in 1980. Filmed in 1983 with Julie Walters and Michael Caine, Russell’s play looks at class, education and social mobility in a way that kept humanity at its heart. Debbie Hannan’s revival for Dundee Rep stars Jonathan Watson as grizzled lecturer Frank and Grace Galloway as the eponymous Rita.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 26-30 May.
A gloriously crumpled Ralf Little takes the lead in David Eldridge’s stage version of John le Carré’s 1963 best selling novel that helped revolutionise the spy genre. Little plays Alec Leamas, a secret agent shot by both sides of the Berlin Wall in this darkly unsentimental piece of Brit-noir pulp fiction.Jeremy Herrin’s touring production originated at Chichester Festival Theatre prior to Little taking over the whisky laced, tobacco stained and heavy coated lead role. The play’s exposure of opposing regimes as two sides of the same rouble is as telling as the glum mundanity of institutional sleights of hand, where everyone is collateral damage, whichever side you’re on.
Once
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 23 May-28 June.
The first main stage play of Alan Cumming’s tenure as Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s artistic director sets the bar high with the Scottish premiere of the Tony and Olivier award winning musical that reunites the original Broadway and West End creative team. Based on John Carney’s 2006 film about a busker and a Czech immigrant in Dublin, Enda Walsh’s script sees former National Theatre of Scotland associate director John Tiffany return to oversee what already looks like a guaranteed hit.
The Herald, May 2nd 2026
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