Coffee-Table Notes

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 ...

Scotland’s theatres are well and truly open to all manner of shows in February. Here are some that shouldn’t be missed.     When Billy Met Alasdair Theatre Royal, Dumfries, 7 February; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, 13 February; Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, 21 February; Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, 27 February; Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 28 February; Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 28 March. Alan Bissett’s speculative conversation between Billy Connolly and Alasdair Gray  at the launch of Gray’s novel, Lanark, in 1981 at Glasgow’s original arts lab, the Third Eye Centre was a hit on the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bissett brings two artistic greats to life with the sort of imagination used in his novels alongside a fearless performative flair. Bissett fans might also want to head over to the Memorial Theatre, Arbroath on February 20th for the last ever performance of Moira in Lockdown, the third and final part of The Moira Mon...

Now panto season is more or less over, the year begins with some big hitters on the touring circuit as well as a couple of more intimate affairs before the theatrical floodgates fully open in February.   MAMMA MIA! The Playhouse, Edinburgh until January 4; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, January 27-February 7. As reviewed on these pages only last week, Catherine Johnson’s ABBA powered dramady sired in the girl powered 1990s is now more than a quarter of a century old. This makes for several layers of nostalgia in Johnson’s marriage of Benny and Bjorn’s greatest hits to Brit-flavoured prime time drama in a yarn about ex pat Donna and her daughter Sophie as they prepare for a Greek wedding that causes Sophie to ant to find out who her dad is. Cue three gentlemen callers from Donna’s past showing up in a show with women’s independence at its heart and some of the best ever 1970s pop bangers thrown in. Following its last few days in Edinburgh to see in the new year, Phyllida Lloyd’s p...

Holly Howden Gilchrist had yet to graduate from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland when she was cast as Catherine in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the Tron Theatre in February this year. By that time, the then twenty-year-old had already won both the Donald Dewar Award and the Pauline Knowles Scholarship at RCS.     As the daughter of actors Kathryn Howden and Gilly Gilchrist, Howden Gilchrist comes from a strong pedigree.   Since A View from the Bridge, Howden Gilchrist has toured in Sylvia Dow’s play, Blinded by the Light, and appeared in Small Acts of Love, Frances Poet and Ricky Ross’s play that was the first production to play at the reopened Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.   Howden Gilchrist returns to the Gorbals for the Citz’s festive production of Beauty and the Beast. All of which makes for quite a start for what looks like a bright future ahead. The List, December 2025   ends

With Herald panto critic Mary Brennan already hotfooting it around the shows of the season, there is alot going on, with a smorgasbord of seasonal fare likely on your doorstep, as outlined below. There is even some non-panto action opening in theatres great and small to see the year out in suitably dramatic fashion.   Baltic Cumbernauld Theatre until December 24. With Cumbernauld Theatre under threat of closure after being turned down for funding, now is probably the time to show some support for one of the most vital arts organisations outside the cities. Jerry Taylor’s new pantomime for Ginger and Jester Productions brings home a very snowy show, as young Elsbeth sets out from the land of Glenfrost to rescue her brother from the clutches of the Snow Queen. Cue a quest loaded with a talking snowman called Nolaff, who’s lost his sense of smell, a seven-foot Yeti and a whole load of storms weathered as Elsbeth discovers her magic powers.     A Christmas Carol Platform, Eas...

James Brining has had quite a couple of weeks. First up, the artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh opened his first show since he took up office six months ago after picking up the baton from David Greig. Brining’s eloquent, witty and really rather lovely production of Chekhov’s play, The Seagull, stars Caroline Quentin as Arkadina, an actress of a certain age who holds court in the midst of a changing society as her would-be playwright son explores the shock of the new.   While Brining’s production was in rehearsals, the Lyceum  announced Lyndsey Jackson as new Executive Director, with Brining becoming the theatre’s sole Chief Executive following the departure of Mike Griffiths. Jackson will take up her post in January after departing her  role as deputy chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society. Her appointment at the Lyceum comes following five new board members taking up post earlier this year.   On the artistic side, this week...