Theatre reviews: My Fair Lady | See How They Run

Pitlochry Festival Theatre's anniversary season is unashamedly nostalgic, but few others are so well equipped to bring out the best in so many classics

• Vicars gather in the quintessential English farce See How They Run

My Fair Lady ****

See How They Run ***

Pitlochry Festival Theatre

SCOTTISH politics is in the grip of major change; but despite the onward rush of the great Highland river that flows past Pitlochry Festival Theatre, there's no sign that the shifting tides of 21st- century history are having much impact on the programme. In many ways, the theatre's 60th Anniversary season – deliberately designed to honour those six decades of history, since John Stewart founded the theatre in a marquee at Knockendarroch, on the other side of town – represents a flashback to what might have been on view in any conservative English rep, a couple of generations ago.

The two most recent plays on the programme are Alan Ayckbourn's mildly disturbing science fiction piece Henceforward (1987), and Peter Nichols's cheeky 1977 hit Privates on Parade, itself set during the National Service years of the late 1940s. James Bridie's Dr Angelus, set to open in August, was first seen in London in 1947, and the three other shows already up and running – My Fair Lady (1956), See How They Run (1943), and Trelawney Of The Wells (1898) – are all classic traditional fare, with a strong twist of nostalgia.

When it comes to theatre programming, though, it's not only what you do, but the way that you do it, and in their flagship musical production of 2011, John Durnin's youthful ensemble give Lerner and Loewe's delicious 1950s hit My Fair Lady an irresistibly fresh, generous and good-looking new staging. As Durnin points out in a programme note, the material is superb. Based on George Bernard Shaw's great comedy Pygmalion – about class, voice and middle-class morality in Edwardian England – My Fair Lady is one of the finest and most thoughtful musicals ever written, featuring more than a dozen superb songs perfectly adapted to the story and characters. It's a story that glows with passion and romance, yet somehow manages – in a glimmer of Shaw's real radicalism – to avoid the predictable soppy ending.

And it's safe to say that there is no other theatre in Scotland, now, remotely as well equipped as Pitlochry to present My Fair Lady, or any show like it. With steadily diminishing help from the Scottish Arts Council or Creative Scotland, John Durnin has protected the terrific legacy of production facilities that the late director Clive Perry left ranged along the banks of the Tummel – the scenery and costume workshops, the handsome dressing-rooms, the production offices. The results, laid out on the Pitlochry stage, are unfailingly impressive. Adrian Rees's set and costumes are beautiful, ingenious and a delight to the eye; the sets, in particular – marbled with quotes from Shaw's play in traditional Times newsprint of the period – are wonderfully swift-moving and evocative, moving seamlessly from the library in Henry Higgins's house – where he and his friend Colonel Pickering train their flower-girl Eliza Doolittle to mimic the accent and mannerisms of the aristocracy – through Mrs Higgins's box at Ascot, to the glorious panorama of the night sky over the city, as seen from the balcony at the Embassy Ball.

It's not only the visual and technical quality of the production that catches the eye. Over the past three years, since the company's huge 2009 success with the musical version of Whisky Galore!, John Durnin has been building up a company of actors who are gifted onstage musicians as well as singers and actors; and although they may not have the most perfect voices on the musical stage, their growing capacity to deliver a fine account of a familiar score, while giving full value to the drama of story and character, has become a joyful and life-enhancing asset to Scottish theatre.

This year, Kate Quinnell makes a delicious, witty, unpretentious and intelligent Eliza, slightly wobbly in voice, but never frightened of the character's more raucous moments, and radiantly beautiful once her transformation is complete. Dougal Lee is just right as a rueful but unfailingly stubborn Henry Higgins, and Sandy Batchelor is an outstanding Freddie Eynsford-Hill – giving an exquisite performance of Freddie's beautiful love-song, On The Street Where You Live. With the help of a small onstage band, musical director Jon Beales shapes up the score brilliantly, for this live, instrument-in-hand performance. It's difficult to imagine any audience member with a heart, a soul, a sense of humour, or an eye for an elegant dress, failing to enjoy this gorgeous evening of theatre, lifted by the performances of an 18-strong company who clearly love what they're doing, and want the audience to love it too.

Richard Baron's short, brisk two-hour production of Philip King's fine wartime comedy See How They Run also delivers real entertainment value; although here, the marriage between company and material seems slightly less harmonious. See How They Run is the quintessential English farce, set in the drawing-room of a country vicarage where things run ever more wildly out of control, following the arrival of an old theatrical colleague to visit the comely young vicar's wife, a cheerful ex-actress called Penelope.

There's a fine, traditional vicarage set to enjoy here – the kind that wins a round of applause from Pitlochry audiences – and a series of accomplished performances, notably from Emma Odell as Penelope, Matthew Romain as her friend Clive, and Fred Broom as the puzzled Rev Humphrey, caught up in a madness he can barely understand. There are moments, though, when Richard Baron's production seems to try too hard with King's text, adding distractingly over-the-top pieces of comic business, and adopting a slightly too knowing approach to a sex comedy that thrives on the sheer innocence of most of the characters. With a farce as well-made as this, it's always best to leave the text to speak for itself, and to let the sheer hilarity of the situation dictate its own physical expression, rather than trying to force the pace.

• My Fair Lady and See How They Run are both in repertoire at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, with the rest of the programme, until 15 October.