The High Life: Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson on turning their airline sitcom into a stage musical

Show to be launched more than 30 years after TV series

It was forged more than 40 years ago between two first-year drama students in Glasgow.

Now Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson have rekindled the partnership that became Scotland's most beloved double acts – for a major new Scottish musical.

They have started work on a stage adaptation of The High Life, their 1990s sitcom about a cabin crew who work for a fictional Scottish airline.

Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson. Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

The pair, who will be reunited on stage for the first time in more than 30 years, have begun working with writer, director and writer Johnny KcKnight and the National Theatre of Scotland on the production.

It has been instigated after Cumming and Masson worked together on a forthcoming book marking the 40th anniversary of comedy-cabaret duo Victor and Barry's first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

They created the characters in 1982 as part of a cabaret event for the final year students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.

Victor and Barry became huge stars thanks to annual Fringe runs and TV appearances but were “killed off” at a benefit night at the London Palladium in 1992. However they reunited to write and appear in The High Life, which was snapped up by the BBC but ran for just one full series, in 1995.

Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson. Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Speaking at an in-conversation event with the writer Michael Pedersen at Edinburgh University, Cumming said: “I’ve been talking a lot about getting older of late, because of the concert show that I’m touring, and this past week I’ve been in Glasgow with the National Theatre of Scotland workshopping a musical of the High Life that we’re going to do.

“We’re going to be in our sixties still playing these flight attendants. It’s really shocking to me that I’m this old and feel the way I do, but it also makes sense when you say ‘oh, I did that in the 1980s or I made that 30 years ago.’ I’m actually embracing it because that’s my life, I still feel very vital and I’ve still got a lot of living to do.

“Writing the book has reminded us how much we love each other, how much fun it is to write together and what a magic combo we are.

"It’s because of that we're now going to do the musical, which we’re writing with the amazing Johnny. We’ve been working on the structure of it, we’re going to do various workshops and then actually do it at the beginning of 2026.”

Forbes Masson and Alan Cumming as Victor and Barry.

Masson told The Scotsman: “Alan and I hadn't properly seen each other for a long time before we started working on the book.

"The last time I saw him properly was in 2011 was when I was over in New York with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I had my wife and kids with me. He took us all out to his place in the Catskill Mountains and we played the Victor and Barry records under the stars - it was surreal.

“We needed to have some space from each other. When you work as a sort of ‘travelling player’ you can get really close to people and then you move on. You get back together with them again years later and it’s like no time at all has passed.

"We wrote the Victor and Barry book together over Zoom. We did so much together when we were kids. The connection we had was just extraordinary. We had such fun doing the book together. We just thought: ‘This has been great – we should do something else.’

Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson. Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

"We were a bit scared about the musical. It was a bit daunting. You just think: ‘It could be a pile of p***?’ But it’s like that with everything you do. We just thought: ‘Let’s do it. Let’s have a laugh. Life is short.’ So we're constructing something at the moment.”