Cheers, tears and laughter flow at National Museum as book festival adds Doctor Who writer to line-up

Wendy Seager as The Speaker in Oedipus Rex, Scottish Opera's production at the Edinburgh International Festival. Picture Jess Shurte | Edinburgh International Festival

Cheers, tears and laughter have been flowing at Edinburgh’s busiest attraction. And I don’t mean the castle. There have been a few epic “nights at the museum” in August in my time.

I’m going back a few years, but the annual summer party on Chambers Street used to be one of the hottest tickets of the season, the film festival has thrown many an opening night party there and the museum programmed its own Friday nights of Fringe fun for a while.

This year it has had a contrasting double life, acting as one of the Gilded Balloon’s main venues during the ongoing refurbishment of Teviot Row House, as well as hosting one of the Edinburgh International Festival’s biggest productions.

In 30 years of festival-going in August, I can’t quite recall anything quite as spectacular as Scottish Opera’s production of Oedipus Rex.

When the show was announced as a “promenade production” back in March, I had visions of a few dozen ticket-holders following a handful of performers around the attraction. I could not have been more wrong.

The museum’s grand gallery was filled by the orchestra and singers roaming around ticket-holders, with the audience members who made it up to the balcony in time to grab a vantage point finding themselves accompanied by lavishly-costumed but silent Gods.

One arts critic admitted she was thwarted in an attempt to get a bird’s eye view of proceedings on the grounds of over capacity, but hailed the experience of being surrounded by a 100-strong chorus as a “truly memorable experience” – despite a close encounter too far with one performer.

She said: “No hard feelings to the tenor who accidentally stepped on my toes!”

Several comic moments were provided by Wendy Seager, the show’s narrator, who was dressed as a museum cleaner, complete with trolley, bucket, mop, and hi-vis jacket.

Jordan Young, Grant Stott and Gail Watson are starring in Chemo Savvy. | Steve Ullathorne/Gilded Balloon

The laughs come thick and fast elsewhere in the museum at the show being staged in honour of the late stage and screen favourite Andy Gray.

With every ticket sold in advance for the run of Chemo Savvy, there was no shortage of appetite for the cancer comedy battle with leukaemia.

Grant Stott, whose last Fringe show with Gray was called off after his initial diagnosis, appears with their panto co-star Jordan Young and another regular Gray collaborator, Gail Watson.

Gray’s influence is felt throughout the production, most memorably with a nod to his panto catchphrase “I’m no’ very well” and his face appearing on a TV screen in the show’s emotional finale.

There was no holding back the tears around me in the museum’s lecture theatre and Stott has admitted it had been a struggle to hold it together so far.

Sharing a picture of his co-stars after selling out an extra show added to the run, the River City star said: “The reaction from audiences has been wonderful. I’ve still not managed to get through a show without greeting.”

By the last week of the festivals I usually lose track of which big names are actually due to be making an appearance.

The book festival was in touch to tell me about the last-minute withdrawal of playwright and screenwriter David Mamet – which was a surprise given he definitely wasn’t in the printed programme. But festivalgoers will instead hear from Doctor Who, Sherlock and Douglas is Cancelled writer Steven Moffat.