Big grown up plays are very much the order of the day in Scottish theatre’s homegrown summer seasons throughout June. Significantly, perhaps, only two of these are musicals, demonstrating that it is still possible to create powerful theatre without making a song and dance about it.
Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In
Cumbernauld Theatre, 6 June; Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, 9-10 June.
Final dates for Frances Poet’s musical play about the 1981 strike by women workers in the Greenock Lee Jeans factory in what should be a powerful return home to the place where it all happened. This co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland, and the Tron Theatre, Glasgow was 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. The Herald called it ‘a spirited tribute to the power of the people’.
Sweat
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh until 13 June.
Industrial unrest is also at the heart of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, revived in this frankly unmissable production by the Citzens Theatre in Glasgow and Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. 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. The Herald called it ‘a note perfect dramatic dissection of how big business has broken working class communities for decades.’
Educating Rita
Dundee Rep until 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 Richard Conlon as grizzled lecturer Frank and Grace Galloway as the eponymous Rita in a production the Herald described as ‘one of the most serious twentieth century comedies left standing.’.
Once
Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 28 June.
The first main stage production 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 a production that the Herald said ‘rises to the occasion with a confidence that bodes well for the shape of things to come.’
The Long Drop
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, June 5-20
True crime comes to the Citz in the form of Linda McLean’s new stage version of Denise Mina’s novel based around the crimes of 1950s Scottish serial killer, Peter Manuel. Mina’s story has Manuel embark on an almighty Glasgow pub-crawl, through which he encounters William Watt, the husband and father of three of Manuel’s victims. Brian Vernel takes on the role of Manuel in Dominic Hill’s production, with Keith Fleming stepping up as Watt in what promises to be a long, dark night of the soul.
My Romantic History
Tron Theatre, Glasgow, June 5-13.
Few writers in Scotland have tapped into smutty adolescent humour quite like D.C. Jackson. This revival of Jackson’s 2010 ‘non-rom-com’ is a well overdue look at what when it first appeared looked like the Stewarton sired writer’s first grown-up work before he moved into TV to script episodes of Fresh Meat, Dead Pixels and Stags. Jackson’s play focuses on the messy travails of Tom and Amy, a pair of terminal singletons who accidentally find themselves dating. What comes next in Johnny McKnight’s revival should give Jackson’s thirty-something sex comedy a new lease of life in a welcome return for a play described by the Herald when it first appeared as ‘a refreshingly rare experience.’
Inexperience
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 13 June-4 July.
Opposites attract in this new play by Douglas Maxwell for Pitlochry Festival Theatre/’s Studio space. Or maybe not, as former university friends Robin and Iris reunite to fulfil a promise they mad that they could only ever touch once. Uptight Robin might have chosen to forget all about it, but impulsive Iris has other ideas in Sally Reid’s production that stars Sandy Grierson and Adura Onashile as the not entirely happy non-couple.
The Only Way Out Is In
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 18-28 June
An audience of one is all that is required for Sharron Devine’s dramatic inquiry into ways of seeing in this Scottish premiere of a work first seen in Coventry, and which here moves into the unique surroundings of Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Explorers Garden Pavilion. In a piece which sees the sole audience member agree to be blindfolded for part of the performance, Devine’s creation explores nature, control, power, risk, balance, trust and choice. With understandably limited options to see – or not – the show, these are some pretty big ideas to take on in such idyllic surroundings, but well worth the day out nevertheless.
Twelfth Night
Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, 24 June-11 July.
Lovers and Madmen is the theme for Bard in the Botanics’ silver jubilee summer season of outdoor Shakespeare. This new production of the bard’s contrarily sunny comedy probably falls very much in the former camp, as shipwrecked twins Viola and Sebastian are separated on the island of Illyria, embarking on assorted mistaken identity sired adventures until the inevitable happy ending brings them and their respective squeezes together once more. All this is likely to be upstaged, in Jennifer Dick’s production, mind you, by the figure of the yellow stocking clad Malvolio in a production featuring some Bard in the Botanics irregulars, including Rebecca Robin as viola and Stephen Arden as Malvolio.
Othello
Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, 24 June-11 July.
Second out of the traps for Bard in the Botanics focuses largely on the ‘Madmen’ bit of the season’s title in a new five-actor version of one of Shakespeare’s most fascinating tragedies, performed here in the Kibble Palace. Shakespeare’s focus is on the interplay between the Moor commander Othello who is manipulated into derangement by his right hand man iago regarding gossip about his wife, Desdemona. Gordon Barr’s production stars Manasa Tagica in the title role, with Bard in the Botanics stalwart Adam Donaldson as Iago.
The Herald, July 6th 2026
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