Written by Martin Sherman

Directed by Alan Cumming and Ben Occhipinti

Review by Dominic Corr

Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Flying onto the stage in a heavenly haze of theatrical smoke and blinding sequins, the ghost of showmanship past crashes directly into a modern writer’s existential crisis. And somehow – this is one of the production’s more subtle moments. Marking a dazzling milestone in Alan Cumming’s inaugural season as artistic director at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Martin Sherman’s I’ll Be Seeing You delivers a riotously meta, generational collision between post-liberation queer identity and 1950s closeted extravagance. Co-directed with slick, free-flowing panache alongside Ben Occhipinti, this world premiere turns a simple theatrical commission into an intoxicating, wildly camp battle for narrative dominance.

What begins in a cramped, unpretentious loft rapidly transforms into an extravagant fantasy world, courtesy of Tim Hatley’s striking production design, which masterfully contrasts bleak reality with spangled, rhinestone-encrusted excess. If it’s gaudy, it’s here. The narrative follows a conflicted, chemsex-recovering Northern Irish playwright, known simply as Writer, who is tasked with crafting a biographical piece about the legendary American pianist. A man he detests more than anyone. Played with energetic dexterity by Fra Fee, Writer finds himself consumed by fury over the musician’s notorious 1959 libel victory against the Daily Mirror and his lifelong refusal to acknowledge his sexuality or later AIDS diagnosis. Yet, while Sherman’s script poses provocative questions about why society canonises tragic martyrs while sneering at closeted survivors, the play’s internal mechanics occasionally wobble.

These structural lulls, however, are effortlessly swept aside by the sheer velocity and charm of the ensemble performances. Making a grand entrance (time and again) Simon Russell Beale gives a tour-de-force portrayal of Liberace, imbuing the pianist with an airborne, unstoppable magnetism. Wrapped in voluminous silver capes and sparkling waistcoats, Beale balances over-the-top theatricality with a fragile, deeply conflicted humanity, creating a life force far too gargantuan to be subdued by modern moralising. Opposite this dazzling spectacle, Fee grounds the drama as the maddened young dramatist, delivering a physically dynamic, emotionally raw performance that captures the painful friction between contemporary openness and historical shame, and manages some of the strongest laughs of the evening with his exasperations.

The supporting cast adds crucial texture to this ideological war. Anne Lacey delivers a comedic masterclass in a multi-layered role as Mother, effortlessly traversing complex accents from American-Polish to Northern Irish with gripping hilarity in a steady reveal that, looking back from the end of the show, threads the reveals and finale meticulously. Meanwhile, Ali Watt and Adam Kashmiry bring vibrant physical presence to their roles as the spangled Hunks, with Watt’s portrayal of the pianist’s chauffeur providing a poignant, sobering glimpse into the tragic human cost of hiding behind a glittering lie.

The production’s ultimate masterstroke arrives in its final stretch, Thanks to the play’s writer, Martin Sherman, with a goosebump-inducing shift to the narrative debate. This meta-theatrical passing of the torch transforms an acerbic political argument into an extraordinarily tender, compassionate encounter across generations. Though the script never quite extracts an authentic confession from a figure who built his entire career on a glittering falsehood, it achieves something far more profound. Exasperated, fierce, and unapologetically flamboyant, this premiere in the Perthshire hills is a triumph of theatrical audacity at its most lurid, camp, and studded in glamour: another helping please.

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