WITH Scotland’s playhouses out-of-bounds thanks to our unwelcome guest Covid-19, many of the nation’s theatre artists have been taking their wares online. The situation created something of a conundrum for the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS).

Typically, the national company eschews Christmas theatre, keen, as it is, to avoid stepping on the financial toes of Scotland’s theatre companies, for whom the festive season usually brings the biggest box office returns of the year.

Graham McLaren’s brilliant staging of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol for the NTS in 2011 was an exception, but that was designed for deliberately small, studio audiences in Govan.

However, 2020 is, as we know to our abundant cost, very much not a normal year.

So, with much of the nation’s theatrical talent twiddling its collective thumbs, the NTS alighted on the idea of a Christmas movie, designed to be screened in cinemas and living rooms throughout the country.

The result is Rapunzel, an on-screen re-telling of the story of the titular, long-haired young woman who finds herself imprisoned in a stone tower. It is, surely, the ultimate tale of social isolation.

The movie is directed by acclaimed pantomime writer-director (and uber-dame) Johnny McKnight and filmmaker Stewart Kyasimire. The script is written by a team of no fewer than seven authors, including McKnight and established dramatists such as Stef Smith and Meghan Tyler.

Filmed on location in and around Stirling Castle, Rapunzel will be screened at numerous independent cinemas throughout Scotland, from Dumfries to Kirkwall, from Tuesday. It will be streamed online from Wednesday until January 4.

The film is also being made available for free to schools; at least 57 schools have registered thus far, meaning that more than 8000 pupils will watch the movie. There will also be free access to the film for Scotland’s hospitals, care homes and prisons.

The NTS promises “a celebration of theatricality, music and storytelling” in a “well-known hairy fairy tale [that has been] untangled and re-braided for this day and age.” Fans of McKnight’s uproarious pantos at Stirling’s Macrobert Arts Centre and the Tron Theatre, Glasgow will not be surprised in the least by the promise of an up-to-the-minute script.

The Ayrshireman’s adventures in Christmas theatre are always steeped in hilarious references to contemporary popular culture and sprinkled with needle-sharp satire. Expect nothing less from his playing of Paige Ootabook, the narrator of this rendering of the much-loved fairy tale.

Paige will, she says, be giving us the full story of Rapunzel, not the carefully edited one we all know. This version involves Rapunzel’s long-suffering hairdresser Anita Haircut (the excellent Julie Wilson Nimmo) and, of course, a heroic, six foot tall, all-singing, all-dancing flower called Rosey Posey (the ever-talented, not to say shy and retiring, Darren Brownlie).

The role of narrator is an unfamiliar Yuletide duty for McKnight, who usually plays the part of Scotland’s most outrageous pantomime dame, and the terror of unsuspecting husbands. That said, one suspects Paige is unlikely to be a placid storyteller in the Jackanory vein.

Rapunzel herself will be played by accomplished musical theatre artist (and New College Lanarkshire graduate) Amber Sylvia Edwards. The generally impressive cast is completed by BSL performer Jamie Rea, and actors Michelle Chantelle Hopewell, Reuben Joseph and Katie Barnett.

The year 2020 has been, as newscasters and politicians never tire of telling us, an “unprecedented” year. Let’s hope that the NTS’s unprecedented move into festive film-making is a brilliant Christmas present that never needs to be repeated.

Rapunzel will screen at selected cinemas from Tuesday and will be available online from Wednesday.

For more information, visit nationaltheatrescotland.com