Coffee-Table Notes

One could be forgiven for thinking that Alan Cumming has been in post as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre longer than he has. Such has been Cumming’s public profile of late, be it hosting events, starring in a stage musical of his and Forbes Masson’s 1980s sitcom, The High Life, or being interviewed on these pages after being named the most influential person in Scotland's art scene for 2026, his ubiquity goes before him. As it is, Cumming’s first season that he’s programmed for the Perthshire based theatre actually only opens this month. This will also mark the 75th anniversary of PFT, when visionary impresario John Stewart first put on theatre in a tent. Cumming’s programme celebrates in spectacular style. This comes with Once, a new production of the hit musical that reunites the original creative team led by director John Tiffany for this multiple Tony winning show. This is followed by Inexperience, a new studio play by Douglas Maxwell, while Maureen Beattie will...

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 Sco...

As Scotland’s theatre season moves into spring, a mix of old and new works packs the schedules across the country, with a potent mix of comedy, tragedy, musicals and high drama at play to keep audiences enthralled.     The High Life: The Musical – Still Living It! Dundee Rep until 4 April; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 7-11 April; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 14-18 April; Eden Court, Inverness, 29 April-May 2; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 12-23 May. To some, putting a short-lived thirty-year-old sit-com onstage may not be the sort of classic fare one has in mind when one thinks of a national theatre’s repertoire. Then again, the National Theatre of Scotland’s staging of Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson’s camp in-flight fare has reunited Cumming, Masson and fellow original cast members Siobhan Redmond and Patrick Ryecart for what promises to be a mid-air romp in a show co-created with the mighty Johnny McKnight. Co-produced by the NTS with Dundee Rep in associat...

The arrival in Adelaide of French acting legend Isabelle Huppert’s solo performance as Mary, Queen of Scots in American visionary Robert Wilson’s production of Mary Said What She Said is a major event. Touring intermittently since 2019, Wilson’s production taps into the doomed Scottish monarch’s inner world via a remarkable fusion of word, image, movement and music.   “The feeling is comparable to being in Mary's head in the moments before she was beheaded,” explains Charles Chemin, the show’s dramaturg, co-director, and long-term collaborator of Wilson. “ One can witness a whirlpool of thoughts and memories in a very direct and immediate way. The experience is then focused on the intensity of the emotions, rather than on their theatricality. It allows a freedom to Isabelle to also act as herself, while being traversed by the poetics, a process that Wilson was particularly fond of, maybe with Isabelle even more than with other actors.”   Mary’s three Adelaide da...

Big plays of all kinds abound on Scotland’s stages this month, with some but by no means all of the wonders opening highlighted here in the hope that readers will try and see as much of this as possible.     Waiting for Godot Citizens Theatre, Glasgow until 14 March. Samuel Beckett’s twentieth century classic is brought to life by Matthew Kelly and George Costigan in the Citz’s brilliant 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 sees them spark off each other in tragicomic fashion in this co-production between the Citz, Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre and Bolton Octagon.   Saint Joan Perth Theatre, 7 March; Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 12-14 March; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 18-21 March. George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 play about Joan of Arc, was probably last seen on the Citizens’ Theatre...

Smile! was one of the hits of the 2025 Adelaide Fringe. Marcel Cole’s solo homage to Hollywood’s great silent movie clown Charlie Chaplin returns to tell Chaplin’s story by way of a mix of mime based routines drawn from Chaplin’s films, biographical material taken from Chaplin’s memoir, and audience interaction The result brings Chaplin’s prevailing image of the little guy in the baggy suit with the moustache, hat and umbrella to vital new life.   “I was already a Chaplin fan after seeing his films, and I loved his book,” Cole says of the roots of Smile! “I never knew he had made talkie films and full length feature films as well as the silent movies, so I was very inspired by that.”   Cole came to Chaplin after training as a ballet dancer before switching to mime based comic performance after studying under legendary French clown Philippe Gaulier. Smile! follows his first self-penned show, Ukulele Man, about English music hall star George Formby.   Cole’s fascination wit...

It was George Costigan’s idea that he and Matthew Kelly should do Waiting for Godot together as Vladimir and Estragon, the two men waiting for the title character who never comes in Samuel Beckett’s play that revolutionised twentieth century drama. Watching these two very different veterans of stage and screen spark off each other as they riff on Beckett’s piece of existential vaudeville in which ‘nothing happens twice’, you can see why it was such an inspired notion.   “This is a play about love,” says Kelly of Godot, in which the everyday chemistry between life long friends is laid bare in all its mundane glory. “For two people like us, who’ve known each other for fifty eight years – and I think Vladimir and Estragon have known each other for that long - it’s kind of an ideal time for us to do it. And we might get it right this time.”   Dominic Hill’s new production that opens at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre prior to dates in Liverpool and Bolton will be the fourth time Kelly ...