Billy Connolly: 'Love letter to The Big Yin' stage show in running for multiple Scottish theatre honours

Sunset Song and The Girls of Slender Means are in contention for ‘CATS’ honours

A stage show paying tribute to the life and legacy of Sir Billy Connolly is in the running for multiple honours at Scotland’s theatre awards.

Described as “a love letter to The Big Yin," Dear Billy is one of the leading contenders in the shortlists for the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland.

Created by theatre-maker and performer Gary McNair, the show is based on memories of, and stories about, the legendary Scottish comic that have been collected in recent years.

Theatremaker Gary McNair has created the stage show 'Dear Billy.' Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Around 8000 people saw the 17-venue run of the National Theatre of Scotland show, which is about to tour again to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Inverness before a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where the comic starred in The Great Northern Welly Boot Show in 1972.

McNair is up for both best performer and best new play in the “CATS,” which will be awarded at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow next month, with Joe Douglas also nominated as best director and Dear Billy in the running for best production.

Other major contenders include new stage adaptations of the Muriel Spark novel The Girls of Slender Means and Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song, as well as a play about a Scottish women’s football team’s bid to win the Homeless World Cup.

The casts of all three shows are in the running for best ensemble, along with Escaped Alone, which was performed at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, and best new play.

Theatremaker Gary McNair has created the stage show 'Dear Billy.' Picture: John Devlin

Adapted by Gabriel Quigley, The Girls Of Slender Means, which recently premiered at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh, is also up for best production and best new play, along with Dear Billy.

Bryony Shanahan is nominated as best director for Same Team: A Street Soccer Story, which the Traverse Theatre created with the Dundee Women’s Street Soccer Team.

Edinburgh-based theatre company Tortoise in a Nutshell has seven nominations in total – four for Ragnarok and three for Ginger.

Douglas Maxwell’s The Sheriff of Kalamaki and Imogen Stirling’s Love the Sinner are also shortlisted for best new play.

Theatremaker Gary McNair has created the stage show 'Dear Billy.' Picture: Sally Jubb

Other contenders for best production include Escaped Alone, Ragnarok and the Catherine Wheels show Lightning Ridge.

Best performance contenders include Darren Brownlie for Meet Me At The Knob, part of Oran Mor’s lunchtime theatre series A Play, A Pie and A Pint, Nicole Cooper for Lear’s Fool as part of Bard in the Botanics series and Blythe Duff for Escaped Alone at the Tron.

Also shortlisted are Paul McCole for The Sheriff of Kalamaki, which was also in A Play, A Pie and A Pint’s programme, Gill Robertson for Lightning Ridge, Alan Steele for Henry IV Parts I & II at Bard in the Botanics, and Kirsty Stuart for A Streetcar Named Desire at Pitlochry Festival Theatre.

Sunset Song, which was launched at Dundee Rep, is nominated for best music and sound, along with the Britpop inspired musical Battery Park, Summerhall Fringe show Club Life and Ragnarok.

Danielle Jam, Ann Louise Ross, Samuel Pashby, Ali Craig, Kirsten Henderson and Murray Fraser are currently starring in Sunset Song at Dundee Rep. Picture: Mihaela Bodlovic

The Scotsman’s chief theatre critic, Joyce McMillan, the co-convenor of the CATS judging panel, said: "We would like to congratulate every professional theatre company in Scotland, on every scale, for the tremendous efforts they make to remain creative, productive and inventive, in what are exceptionally tough times.”