AS we head into the New Year, Scotland’s theatres are either still in the grip of pantomime mayhem or taking a well-earned break before the new theatre season gets underway.
Nevertheless, theatre-lovers can already get to work on those pristine, new diaries and calendars because the 2024 live drama offering is starting to shape up nicely.
First up is the headline-grabbing and much anticipated production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh, January 12-27) starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma.
Directed by Simon Godwin, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in the United States, the show opened in Liverpool last month to considerable critical acclaim.
The Royal Highland Centre (RHC) at Ingliston is the second stop on a four-venue tour that takes the production to London and Washington DC. The producers boast that they are staging the Bard’s iconic “Scottish play” in “custom built theatre spaces unique to this production giving audiences the chance to be even closer to the action.”
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The RHC has past form in this regard. During the Edinburgh International Festival in 2009 the great Romanian theatre director Silviu Purcarete and the “Radu Stanca” National Theatre of Sibiu staged a genuinely unforgettable production of Goethe’s Faust at the Ingliston venue.
The show began with the audience watching from a huge seating bank, as if viewing a circus performance. However, as Faust descended into his dark night of soullessness, the set opened out, utilising the capaciousness of the place, and we, the astonished audience, followed the visibly stunning action on foot.
So, no pressure on Mr Godwin, then.
That said, he has top-rate actors (including Scotland’s own Keith Fleming as King Duncan and Siward) and considerable resources at his disposal. A memorable rendering of a very well-kent classic is in prospect.
As the RHC is opening its doors to one tale of malign metaphysics, the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh will be embarking on another. Acclaimed Scottish actor Forbes Masson returns to the Caledonian stage as the sole performer of Jekyll and Hyde (January 13-27), adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novella by Gary McNair.
Adapter McNair offers this monodrama fresh from the double success in 2023 of Dear Billy (his homage to Billy Connolly, of which more below) and Nae Expectations (his Dickens adaptation for the Tron Theatre, Glasgow). Stevenson, Masson and McNair are a formidable trio, and this one-actor performance promises to get the Lyceum’s theatre year off to a very good start.
Manipulate (various Edinburgh venues, February 1-11), the excellent annual festival of animated film, puppetry and visual theatre always offers a rich and diverse array of live performance.
This year, Last Rites (The Studio, February 3 & 4), by Bristol-based company Ad Infinitum, is likely to be among the highlights.
A collaboration between Ad Infinitum’s artistic director George Mann and acclaimed, Scotland-based theatre-maker Ramesh Meyyappan, this piece of non-verbal theatre delves into love and loss as it traces one man’s quest to create and perform the burial rites for his father. The producers promise “physical storytelling, dynamic projection and a resonant soundtrack.” Check-out the full Manipulate programme at: manipulatearts.co.uk.
From late February, there’s another chance to see the Tron Theatre Company’s award-winning production of David Ireland’s brilliant political comedy Cyprus Avenue (Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, February 27 to March 2).
Directed by recently departed Tron artistic director Andy Arnold, this excellent staging stars the superb David Hayman as Eric Miller, the confused Ulster Unionist who mistakes his infant granddaughter for Gerry Adams.
Another welcome revival is the three-venue tour of the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh’s celebrated production of This Is Memorial Device (touring Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, March 28 to April 20).
Based on the book by David Keenan, adapted and directed by Graham Eatough, and performed by the brilliant Paul Higgins, the piece is a resonating evocation of urban Scotland and the rock music scene in the 1980s.
Staying in the turbulent 1980s, Maggie & Me (touring Scotland, May 8 to June 15) brings Damian Barr’s acclaimed memoir to the stage.
Adapted for the National Theatre of Scotland by Barr himself and fine dramatist James Ley, it offers a personal and political “rollercoaster ride… from the furnaces of the Ravenscraig Steelworks to the sanctuary of Carfin Grotto” by way of Dolly Parton.
Any theatre-lover who missed Macbeth (an undoing) (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, May 14-25), Zinnie Harris’s liberal and audacious adaptation of Shakespeare, should seize the opportunity of catching it when it returns to Scotland from richly deserved travels to London and New York.
The top-notch performance from the ever-fantastic Nicole Cooper (in the lead role of Lady Macbeth) is worth the ticket price on its own.
Gary McNair’s performance in the fabulous Dear Billy (touring Scotland, May 16-29) is another must-see. As, by all accounts, is Sally Reid’s playing of the title role in Shirley Valentine (Pitlochry Festival Theatre, July 4 to September 28).
I contrived to miss this production when it was first staged at the Theatre in the Hills in 2022. Such was the enthusiasm of my colleagues on the judging panel of the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland (who awarded Ms Reid a Best Actor gong for her performance) that I’ll be hot-footing it up to Highland Perthshire in the summer.
These are just some of the delights that await Scotland’s theatregoers in 2024. I’m also looking forward to David Greig’s new play Two Sisters (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, February 10 to March 2) and a new staging of Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone (Tron Theatre, Glasgow, March 13-16).
The Edinburgh International Children’s Festival (various venues, May 25 to June 2) remains, in my view, the best, most consistent theatre and performance festival programme in Scotland. Check for the full programme at: imaginate.org.uk.
There will (to quote the Joy Division album title) be unknown pleasures to come in the theatre programmes of the Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh Fringe in August.
However, for now, dear reader, I hope the above selection is enough to whet your theatrical appetite.
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