Alan Cumming on the magic of Pitlochry Festival Theatre: 'I love the soup to nuts aspect of the place'

It’s a beautiful late spring day on the banks of the River Tummel at Pitlochry; and inside the handsome complex of theatre buildings at Port Na Craig, just across the river from the town, the pace of work is intense, as the pressure builds towards the opening performances of this year’s summer season.

Down in the costume workshop, on the floor below the foyer, wardrobe manager Julie Carlin and her fellow stitchers are creating Teen Angel costumes for this year’s in-house production of the musical Grease, and chatting and laughing as a work. “We’re always in a good mood when we’re working on Grease,” says Carlin, “because the costumes are such fun. The Great Gatsby - well that’s a bit more intense!”

Alan Cumming is artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre | Jane Barlow/PA Wire

In the huge carpentry workshop opposite the stage scene dock, meanwhile, a team of three remarkably happy men are singing as they wheel parts of the Grease set out into the sunshine, after some test runs this week, and push them across the yard for some finishing touches. They point out bits and pieces of the set for much-loved 1930s adventure The 39 Steps, while senior carpenter Colin Stephen tells me how much they all enjoy the work, and how satisfying it is to create sets that can cope with the unique challenges of Pitlochry’s famous repertory season, which often involves staging performances of four or five different main stage shows in single week - to say nothing, these days, of additional productions in Pitlochry’s fine new Studio Theatre, opened in 2022.

Up in the big rehearsal room beyond the forest, meanwhile, the cast of Grease - part of this year’s 21 strong acting ensemble - are hard at work, rehearsing a show that has been co-produced with the Grand Theatre, Blackpool, but cast and created here at Pitlochry, with some powerful young Scottish talent in this year’s ensemble. Grease will open in Blackpool on 4 June, before returning to Pitlochry to become the first main stage show of the season, and will feature familiar Pitlochry faces Blythe Jandoo and Fiona Wood as the heroine Sandy and rebel girl Rizzo, with David Rankine as Doody, and new graduate Eden Barrie - who grew up in Pitlochry - as Marty.

Rehearsals for Grease at Pitlochry Festival Theatre | Contributed

All four agree that Pitlochry’s move, in recent years, towards creating new in-house productions of popular musicals is providing unprecedented opportunities for young Scottish actors to develop the quadruple-threat professional skills in acting, singing, dancing, and also playing musical instruments, that are involved in the instrument-in-hand style of musical presentation partly pioneered by the theatre’s former artistic director Elizabeth Newman, with Grease’s musical director Richard Reeday. Newman left for Sheffield Theatres at the end of 2024 after a transformative six years at Pitlochry, during which she fully reconnected the theatre with a Scottish theatre scene from which it had, at some points in its history, become strangely distant.

And in the theatre’s lovely cafe bar overlooking the river sits the man at the centre of this action-packed moment of transition in the history of the Festival Theatre; at the centre not because he created this summer season - it was programmed by Newman before her departure - but because the future of all that has been achieved here, in the theatre’s 74-year history, now depends on the decisions that stage and screen star Alan Cumming will make over the next few years, following his surprise appointment as artistic director last autumn.

“It was Elizabeth Newman who first put the idea into my mind, of course,” says Cumming with a laugh, “masterminding the whole thing. I met her somewhere a couple of years ago, and when I told her that I had never been to the theatre in Pitlochry, even though I grew up in the area, she invited me to visit, and of course I was just blown away by what goes on here.

Rehearsals for Grease at Pitlochry Festival Theatre | Contributed

“Right away, I just loved the soup to nuts aspect of the place, the fact that on this site, they create the whole of this season plus a Christmas show from scratch - sets, costumes, musical presentation, the lot. Elizabeth asked me then if I had ever thought of running a theatre building, and I said no, no, no, of course I couldn’t possibly do that.

“But the idea was planted; and when I heard that she was leaving - well I was inspired by the theatre’s recent slogan ‘Bringing the world to Pitlochry, and Pitlochry to the world.’ I thought, wait a minute, I really could help the theatre to do that. So I decided to go for it; and here I am.

“I’m also really passionate about all the great stories Scotland has to tell, and about making sure audiences have access to them - whether it’s historic writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, or taking a second look at some of the great plays that have been written in Scotland in recent decades, and often only had very short first runs. I won’t be announcing my 2026 programme until September or thereabouts; but I hope to find ways of celebrating some of those great stories, and I’m really looking forward to being deeply involved in it all.”

At the moment, it’s impossible to say whether the arrival of the Alan Cumming era will mean profound changes to Pitlochry’s time-honoured summer repertory system, and the big acting ensemble that traditionally delivers it. For now, though, he is clearly in listening mode; and noting the vital role Pitlochry has come to play in the last decade, as what is now, by some measures, Scotland’s busiest producing house, despite relatively modest support from public funds.

“I’ve also been really inspired by the story of the theatre’s founder, John Stewart,” says Cumming, “and of how during the Second World War, he left himself a little written message, in a tree by the river, vowing that if and when peace came, he would found a theatre here.

“And in 1945, he came back, found the message still there, and started the process that led to the opening of the original theatre in a tent, in 1951. So I hope that we can mark that in some really special ways, as we celebrate the 75th anniversary next year.

“For me, at the age I am now, this also feels like a homecoming,” adds Cumming, who turned 60 in January. “Above all, I want to make sure that young people coming into theatre in Scotland now have the same wonderful support and opportunities I had, when I started out 40 years ago; and if I can help achieve that, during my time here, I’ll feel that I’m coming full circle and giving something back, in a way that really matters to me.”

Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Summer Season runs until 27 September. For details see https://www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com/whats-on/

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