What a year. From deals with the devil to singing nuns, the blitz to the Appalachian Mountains, and to the end of the world and the emergence of a new one, theatre across Scotland in 2024 was fraught with many difficulties. As we head into a concerning 2025, where questions of funding still hang over the heads of the industry, we first take a moment back to a year which re-ignited many talents and saw a game of musical chairs for some of the most significant venues’ artistic directors.
Below is a selection of the ‘these go to’ eleven top picks from across the team for shows produced within or created in part from Scottish venues and teams. It was a year of powerful performances, but notably a year where innovative writing and ensemble performances shone through on and off the stage.
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If you have a show coming to Scotland in 2025, and would like to chat with us about a Q&A or a review, please do get in touch through the ‘contact’ page, where one of the team will get back to you!
‘No one is better at insulting the Scots than, well, the Scots. Call it, self-preservation. Call it, beating them to the punch. Call it self-commodification.’
This debut play, written and directed by Fraser Scott, had a short run but an enormous voice. C*mmon Tongue’s force lay in its wording, brutally honest construction, and a perfect delivery from Olivia Caw. Talented, nuanced, and occasionally subtle as a brick, Scott’s slap-back at the self-commodification which permeates Scottish theatre, and life, weaved together with comedy and poetry into a silvery and slick piece of spoken-word theatre which embraces both our unique voice – but the shared one across Europe, spoken in different languages, but with the same connotations and drawn ire based on class, gender, and culture. All leads up to a pathos-ridden, expletive, and bombastic finale, which is earned and deserved.
Reviewed at The Scottish Storytelling Centre
‘A contemporary nightmare: crafted with insight and boldness, The Events defies the concerns of being ‘numbed’ to relevance by being a classic piece of Scottish theatre.’
Following the events leading up to, during, and after (though not in a refined order) a mass shooting at a community space prided for its inclusive and multicultural members – misogyny shifts its guise in Jack Nurse’s re-staging of David Grieg’s The Events which stunned audiences at The Lanternhouse, Cumbernauld, and was bolstered by the marvellous onstage presence and performances from the North Lanarkshire Choir.
Featuring terrific performances from the powerful Claire Lamont, and one of Scotland’s greatest Sam Stopford, The Events drew audiences into a cruel world – one separated from our own by the slimmest slivers of reflection, a warning that we are already through the looking glass, and offered up the complexities of resilience, forgiveness, and the healing power of community.
Reviewed at The Lanternhouse, Cumbernauld
‘The role of music, however, is where this play supersedes the tragedy of its subject matter. Finding solace in songwriting‘
Lacing together a created story of the titular Giant, embracing the storytelling elements and musicality of this cobbled-together, and comforting piece, Liam Hurley and Jo Mango’s devised piece, A Giant on the Bridge, saw enormous positive reception on its first outing – before coming back to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for a sell-out run, which saw an even more powerful reception from crowds.
A variation on the Norwegian Heartless Giant myth, framed in a way to draw together a collection of stories gathered and performed in a culmination of four years of co-created work as part of the Distant Voices: Coming Home project.
Reviewed at the Traverse Theatre and Assembly Hall
Like all tremendous writing, Philip Ridley’s provocative Radiant Vermin has done nothing more than prove its prophetic potential; this contemporary fable of warning and reflection meditates on our ravenous desire to satisfy.’
In this wicked piece of satire, a young couple are offered the opportunity to get the one thing many are unable to achieve: a home of their own. But, as with all good things, there comes a price. In Johnny McKnight’s take on Ridley’s Radiant Vermin, performed at The Tron Theatre, this cautionary fable was deeply inventive and illustrative in its combustive storytelling on the destructive nature of consumerism and how the tarnished allure of capitalism still clings on.
Starring Dani Heron and Martin Quinn (supported by a brilliant Julie Wilson Nimmo), the show captures the humour and relatability of guilt – their chemistry as the young couple propel the story forward as the new home reveals itself in front of audiences thanks to lashings of creative light work and staging in this meta-theatrical experience which remained with audiences long beyond the Tron’s walls.
Reviewed at The Tron Theatre
‘A frosty afternoon in Pitlochry must be in the mix to be on a list of our favourite things. Now add in a day spent surrounded by a beaming audience, bunting and decorations for the seasons to mark their closing production of the season, and that makes this a pretty damn hard list to top. ‘
A production which stands up to the voices of adversity, and gently encourages audiences to do similar, Scotland’s Theatre in the Hills brought the Oscar & Hammerstein classic The Sound of Music to Scottish audiences with the first major production of the show (outside of touring and grassroots performances).
Lead by this year’s star performer, Kirsty Findlay, Elizabeth Newman’s departing show demonstrates their impact to the venue gloriously – a show to be cherished and remembered by audiences for years to come. Supported by a strong ensemble cast and continuing this year’s glowing example of community and young performers, the Von Trapp family are brimming with song and heart once again in Pitlochry, ready for a return performance in 2025.
Reviewed at The Pitlochry Festival Theatre
‘Everything you could say about Nicole Cooper’s Hedda is neither true nor false. They are bombastic, they are subtle; they are petulant; they are the original mean girl, they are stuck in the past; they are broken and they are weary.’
The ribbons of realism are captured in Kathy McKean’s new take on Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, which opened this season’s Bard in the Botanics – with Nicole Cooper taking up the leading role, supported by a sensationally talented ensemble.
Under the enormous metal cage of the Kibble Palace, the productions setting could not have been more perfect as each of the revised elements, performances, and direction leads to a story that, once renowned for its realism in 1891, still finds itself agonisingly appropriate.
Reviewed at The Glasgow Botanical Gardens, Kibble Palace
June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music, and Me
‘’A journey punctuated with rage and a personal edge that is both touching and eye-opening. It offers an insight into Boyd’s resilience and the thunderous theatre-making storm they’re surely in for,’
Reuniting the Appalachian Mountains with the Scottish Highlands, Charlene Boyd’s June Carter Cash turns the biographical elements of theirs, and Boy’s story, into a rounded show which divulges the ins and outs of theatre-making and the intricacies and dangers of the industry.
Quickly cementing itself as a central Fringe production, the National Theatre of Scotland, and Grid Irons’ piece (staged by the incredible Cora Bissett) was a deeply inventive show with a gingham heart, transforming the Summerhall Demonstration Room into a Country bar, Boyd’s flat, and flats of America – all set to the sound of some fab co-stars in Harry Ward, Ray Aggs, and Amy Duncan.
Reviewed at Summerhall: Demonstration Room
‘Tortoise in a Nutshell not only craft a form-defining production, they bottle omnipotence and channel it right into the souls of the audience ‘
Delayed due to Covid, this year finally saw the majesty of Tortoise in a Nutshell’s Ragnarök thunder onto stages, blending live animation with puppetry, movement, and sound design to craft a piece unlike others on Scottish stages.
With a steady thumb on the pulse of the world around it, re-shaping the Norse mythos of the end of the world, the story of Ragnarök swoopsaudiences into the streets created before them through various camera techniques and tricks, in an unmistakable echo of the inescapable images of children and innocents across Gaza, Ukraine, and the world. A global piece of storytelling, with the weight of centuries behind it, spoken with a communal tone and polishes to an exceptionally professional level.
Reviewed at The Traverse Theatre
‘Bringing life and merriment and form to the often two-dimensional shadows of the women impacted by the war, but who kept (somewhat) calm and carried on, now serving a firmly impressive and zesty control of the Lyceum stage.’
A stirring adaptation from Gabriel Quigley, performed at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, The Girls of Slender Means showcased the rising talent emerging across Scotland and the UK in a way few others shows achieved.
Capturing the emotional eccentricities of the summer of 1945, not long following Victory in Europe, Muriel Sparks novella locates the uncertain joys for five women of the May of Teck Club lodgings, professionals, as Britain disarms the sirens and attempts to re-build itself. Visually striking, The Girls of Slender Means was one of the Lyceum’s most solid productions in recent years; well-crafted and competent, even warming amidst the desolation of the blitz.
Reviewed at The Royal Lyceum Theatre
‘This is a story of survival, coming to terms with change but having to do it all alone. Hannah Khalil, an already established writer, burgeons her way into the Fringe with this one.’
Food and live entertainment shouldn’t mix. Just think about the rustle and crunch; the slurping and the smells permeating the space.
But then there are show which defy any idea of ‘norm’ and parcel two of the most powerful forces in our cultural language into a transgressive production from Soho Theatre and The Traverse with My English Persian Kitchen, from Hannah Khalil.
Performed with precision by Isabella Nefar, directed by Chris White, this warm and vibrant production flickers between live cooking, and erratic and explosive storytelling with a masterful edge as Khalil and Nefar capture the memories of taste and aroma, weaving around her mother’s kitchen, recreating dishes from their childhood, forced to build a new life and community around the food, after losing everything.
Reviewed at The Traverse Theatre
‘Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone, a sensation at the Royal Court in 2016, has lost none of its punch. The mixture of Margaret Atwoodesque speculative fiction and Take the High Road is a potent and unexpected one.’
The Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland winner for 2024, Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone, directed by Joanna Bowman, was met with universal acclaim and appreciation from audiences at The Tron Theatre and Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.
A series of dystopian monologues punctuates a group of friends joshing and poking fun at one another, their comfortable sandals and mismatched chairs conjuring a comforting scene with a more sinister truth behind the hedgerows.
With the passing if the immensely talented Joanna Tope, who played Sally in Escaped Alone, it was a privilege to see their radiant performance on the Tron stage alongside an insanely talented cast, which also netted the team the CATS award for Best Ensemble.
Reviewed at The Tron Theatre and Traverse Theatre
Interested in being featured? With many previews and Q&As lined up, we’re always happy to chat about including your show in future articles. Please do get in touch through the contact page to feature in an upcoming ‘Have A Gander’