This weekend is the very last chance to see a welter of major productions, so if there are any tickets left, probably best get them now. While the next couple of weeks also see the last legs of assorted tours, midway through the month we start seeing the first of the season’s festive offerings. We’ll save full on panto season until next month (oh yes we will, etc), but remember, pantomime isn't just for Christmas.
1984
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh until 7 November.
There is something unmistakably now about Chris Hannan’s new stage adaptation of George Orwell’s very British dystopian classic, brought to life in Dominic Hill’s production with a sense of theatrical largesse on Tom Piper’s set. With Jack Tarlton and Jessica Hardwick leading the cast as Winston and Julia’s pair of rebels with a cause who rise up against the groupthink of a post truth future, Hannan frames the bleak and brutal meat of the play with an appearance by Orwell himself, who finds his views challenged while trying to finish his book from his hospital bed. The result in this touring production led by Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre is unmissable.
Othello
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow until 7 November.
Shakespeare’s play of love and war is set during the fallout of the 1982 Falklands War
In this Citizens co-production with Home, Manchester and Newcastle’s Northern Stage in association with the Royal and Derngate, Northampton. This makes for a highly charged affair set on a military barracks where military general Othello’s secret wedding with army brat Desdemona takes over Othello’s life in a brutal time bomb of a production that takes no prisoners.
Man to Man
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until 7 November.
Tilda Swinton returns to the Traverse after thirty-nine years in her breakout stage role in Anthony Vivas’ translation of German writer Manfred Karge’s play, Jacke wie Hose. Swinton plays a woman called Ella, who pretends to be her dead husband Max in order to retain his job in Nazi Germany. The act goes on for years as history plays out around Ella, with two new scenes added by Karge to illustrate how the new world order played out since the fall of the Berlin Wall. With Swinton reuniting with the 1987 production’s original creative team, the result is a fierce look at grief, survival and epic aloneness in a divided state.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 7 November.
Muriel Spark’s libertine Edinburgh school ma’am is brought to life by Paisley born Hollywood émigré Gayle Rankin in David Harrower’s stage version for the National Theatre of Scotland. This sees former NTS artistic director Vicky Featherstone take the helm in the first stage version of Spark’s 1961 novel since Jay Presson Allen’s 1968 adaptation. The crème de la crème have arisen.
The Steamie
King’s Theatre, Glasgow until 14 November.
Tony Roper’s comedy set on a 1950s Glasgow New Year’s Eve as four women do their laundry in the local washhouse has become a bona fide classic since it first appeared in 1987. Roper returns as director for the Rerr Terr company’s ongoing touring production, which bursts into life like a living picture postcard of a post war Glasgow in the thick of change. While the classic routines remain some of the funniest things ever committed to a stage, there are hidden depths aplenty in a show that reaches audiences theatres across the land are crying out for. Younger theatre makers should attend en masse to see how it’s done.
The Tailor of Inverness
Paisley Town Hall, Tullynessle and Forbes Hall, 7 November; Phoenix Centre, Newton Dee, 8 November; Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 11-12 November; Portgordon Village Hall, 13 November; Rosehall Hall, 14 November; Aboyne and Dinnet Church Hall, 17 November.
Matthew Zajac’s deeply personal solo play about his father’s flight from the then Polish region of Galicia in what is now Western Ukraine tells a remarkable story of exile that sees him eventually land in Inverness. First seen in 2008 in a production by the Highland based Dogstar company, Zajac’s show has itself travelled the world, as it continues on its own cross country journey on the last leg of its current Scottish tour.
The Haunting of Hill House
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 10-14 November.
Shirley Jackson’s gothic novel has had plenty of lives since it was first published in 1959. After two films, a Netflix series and a previous stage version by Anthony Neilson, Neilson’s Scots playwriting peer Stef Smith picks up the mantle of Jackson’s yarn about a group of investigators who check in to an old mansion with a dark past and secrets aplenty to see just how haunted it really is. Expect jump scares aplenty.
Scrooge! The Musical
SEC Armadillo, Glasgow, 12 November-10 January.
Marti Pellow takes the title role in this new large-scale staging of the late Leslie Bricusse’s stage version of Charles Dickens’ novel. Based on the 1970 film starring Albert Finney, the original 1992 production starred Bricusse’s long-term collaborator Anthony Newley, with Tommy Steele picking up the baton later on. Pellow’s succession to the role sees him appear alongside Karen Dunbar and Gavin Mitchell on what in terms of scale at least, looks like it might be the biggest Christmas show in the country.
Matilda The Musical
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 18 November-5 December.
Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel about the uber smart little girl with a passion for learning and the gift of telekinesis was already something of a wonder long before Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin’s stage version was originally produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since then it has toured the world in an epic staging that saw Kelly win a Tony award for Best Book for a musical. One of the real wonders of the show is that the children on stage aren’t just going through the motions, but actually lead things in a remarkable display of well-drilled panache that makes for an unmissable experience.
The Snaw Queen
Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 18 November-31 December.
Johnny McKnight returns to the Tron to write, direct and star in the theatre’s fortieth anniversary pantomime with a remount of his 2016 show. McKnight plays Santa, aka Kristine Kagney Kringle, whose workshop is running like a dream, until a broken mirror transforms Rudie the Red Nosed Reindeer into the terrifying Snaw Queen. With Olive the Other Reindeer in tow, Kristine embarks on a quest to try and change the Snaw Queen back to Rudie in a guaranteed festive treat.
My Fair Lady
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 21 November-31 December.
Alan Cumming’s first season as Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s artistic director draws to a close with a main stage revival of Lerner and Loewe’s classic musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion. Cumming himself plays Professor Henry Higgins, who takes cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle under his wing to educate her and introduce her to the sophisticated things in life. What could possibly go wrong? Rising star Verity Power plays Eliza.
A Man for All Seasons
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 24-28 November.
As post-modern takes on history a la SIX abound, this new tour of Robert Bolt’s play about Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor Thomas More brings the big guns back to the stage. Originally written as a radio play in 1954, and then seen in an hour-long TV version, Bolt’s play was first staged in 1960, and was later made into a successful film. Martin Shaw returns to play More in a role he first took on back in 2006 in an acclaimed London production. Expect understated gravitas aplenty in one of the late twentieth century’s most eloquent and thoughtful of history plays.
The Herald, November 7th 2026
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