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Once

Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Four stars

 

You know the craic. You step into a late night music bar, the joint is jumping, and you walk out with your life turned upside down. Or at least this is what happens to the Dublin troubadour at the heart of Enda Walsh’s musical stage version of John Carney’s hit big screen romance. The catalyst for this wake up call is a turbo charged Czech pianist who tunes into his sad eyed laments and decrees they make an album together. Rounding up a group of misfits Commitments style, an all night burst of creativity sees them set down a classic before everything has to change once more.

 

As those who have seen either the film or John Tiffany’s Tony award winning Broadway production will already know, beyond the pair’s obvious chemistry, it’s complicated. For one unrepeatable moment, however, the international language of music and the emotional sparks that fly from it are the only things that matter. 

 

As an opening gambit for Alan Cumming’s tenure as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre goes, having Tiffany reunite his original creative team is setting the bar pretty high. Tiffany’s revival duly rises to the occasion with a confidence that bodes well for the shape of things to come. 

 

At the centre of this is a pair of wonderful performances by Lydia White and Dylan Wood as the unnamed Girl and Guy. As White and Wood capture the personal and creative connections between the pair with poignancy and wit, Walsh’s text bounces between first meetings, awkward encounters with flatmates and parents and a final letting go with a playful charm. 

 

With a ten-string cast doubling up as the show’s house band, it is as if the baroque chamber folk soundtrack that channels Irish, American and East European traditions is itself a character that gives the play its emotional heart. This is brought to life by Martin Lowe’s exquisite arrangements of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s original songs. 

 

As the cast navigate fiddles, cellos and mandolins around Bob Crowley’s meticulously observed Irish bar set, the arrangements lend things an understated porch song intimacy. There are points as well when Steven Hoggett’s nuanced impressionistic movement resembles pop video stylings. 

 

Whatever happens next for White and Wood’s Girl and Guy, they will always have Dublin. They’ll get a great record out of it one day. 


The Herald, May 30th 2026

 

Ends 

 

 

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