Alan Cumming has laid his cards on the table for Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s 2027 season, and his hand is glamorous.
Alongside the previously billed world première of Harry Macqueen’s stage adaptation of Supernova—starring Cumming and Ewan McGregor under the direction of John Tiffany—the Main House will mount Alan Ayckbourn’s 1974 comedy Absent Friends and Dolly Parton’s musical 9 to 5. The Studio slate promises world premières from playwright Hannah Lavery and debutant Eden McIntyre, with the entire enterprise backed in association with West End impresario Sonia Friedman Productions.
It is a glittering prospectus that any regional house in Britain would trade its left fly tower to announce.
Yet beneath the marquee wattage and Hollywood glamour, an institutional riddle is lurking: what will the future be for Pitlochry Festival Theatre once its starry artistic director packs his bags?
The Death of the Bastion
Before we celebrate the stardust, we ought to be far more upset than we are about what was surrendered to make room for it.
For generations of theatregoers, Pitlochry was not just a picturesque venue on a bend in the River Tummel; it was the final, remarkable redoubt of true repertory theatre in the United Kingdom. Its cherished calling card—‘stay six days, see six plays’—was powered by an indefatigable resident ensemble that could pivot from Alan Ayckbourn on a Wednesday matinee to Arthur Miller or Stephen Sondheim by Saturday evening.
It was an idiosyncratic tradition, demanding well-developed logistical muscle, genuine technical versatility, and institutional faith.
The Royal Shakespeare Company surrendered that battle more than two decades ago, abandoning the permanent repertory ensemble when escalating overheads and complex scheduling made the old model unsustainable. Pitlochry held out in the Perthshire hills, operating as a living monument to a vanished era of British theatrical craft. Now only Dundee Rep’s embattled full-time company remains — the last major year-round producing theatre of its kind anywhere in the UK.
Speaking to Dominic Corr at Corr Blimey, Cumming was coolly unsentimental about dismantling the company. ‘It wasn’t financially viable anymore… Yes, I was the catalyst, but it was also the logical step. I’m not doing anything to be clever for the sake of it. Everything has been thought through,’ said Cumming.
He was equally candid about unsettling the building’s traditional rhythm along the way, recalling that the theatre’s finance director warned, ‘Alan, you have too many ideas.’ A board member, meanwhile, captured the mood by dubbing him ‘a disruptive force—in a good way’.
Disruption, however, is easy; rebuilding an artistic ecosystem from the ground up is another matter entirely.
I’m sure some will accuse me of rose-tinted nostalgia (apologies for the mixed metaphor), but in losing the repertory industry, the UK has traded long-term infrastructure for short-term, sure-bet survivalism. What’s left — as we can see in Pitlochry — are seasons built around highly polished, commercial ‘events’ — but at the cost of the working-class pipeline (however imperfect), and regional creative health that made British theatre world-class in the first place.
Speaking to Dominic Corr at Corr Blimey, Cumming was coolly unsentimental about dismantling the company. ‘It wasn’t financially viable anymore… Yes, I was the catalyst, but it was also the logical step. I’m not doing anything to be clever for the sake of it. Everything has been thought through,’ said Cumming.
Maybe Cumming is correct, and his way was the only way the theatre in the Highlands could survive, but his predecessor, Elizabeth Newman, left Pitlochry Festival Theatre in pretty robust shape: physically and financially. Her award-winning programming broke even through a clever mix of co-production, outdoor exploits, and that traditional ensemble setup. It wasn’t easy, and I doubt just anyone could manage it in the current economic catastrophe we are living through — but you have to think there was another way forward aside from a star-powered Rolodex.
The Rolodex as Strategy
Talking of which, Cumming’s arrival in Perthshire was widely hailed as a watershed coup for Scottish culture. He framed his appointment in evocative terms: ‘For me, all roads lead to the theatre and all roads lead to Scotland. I am a theatre animal at heart and, like Robert Burns, my heart is in the Highlands.’
His artistic philosophy for the venue was equally forthright: to ‘challenge expectations’, remind audiences they are alive, and ‘just want to make you gasp’.
Talking to Dominic Corr at Corr Blimey, Cumming laid out the arithmetic behind his thinking. Noting that roughly 75% of the theatre’s patrons travel more than an hour to reach Pitlochry, he set out to lean into that geographic reality and transform the venue into an ‘international destination, both for audiences and for artists’.
The mechanism, obviously, relies on leveraging top-tier relationships: developing high-profile work in the Highlands before touring those productions across the globe.
In his inaugural 2026 season, that strategy paid swift dividends. His production of A History of Paper, starring Cumming alongside Shirley Henderson, earned enthusiastic reviews, while his Out In The Hills festival—founded to celebrate queer narratives—delivered an intimate conversation with Graham Norton. More recently, none other than Simon Russell Beale dominated the stage as Liberace in I’ll Be Seeing You — receiving inevitably rapturous applause at every curtain call.
Cumming also breathed new life into the cavernous, glass-fronted foyer overlooking the river, introducing ceilidhs and pop-up events to animate a public space he felt had been historically neglected.
Yet, remarkable as this purple patch has been, it relies almost entirely upon the contents of one man’s personal address book.
The Stratford Precedent
If Pitlochry cannot return to its historic past, its post-Cumming survival will depend on what operational model it chooses to inherit.
One need only look two hundred miles south to Warwickshire to see the likely template. Having scrapped pure rep at the turn of the century, the modern Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon survives on a dual-track balance system.
On one track run the commercial blockbusters. Headline vehicles like Kenneth Branagh in The Cherry Orchard or the lavish spectacle of Game of Thrones: The Mad King provide the box-office cash, corporate sponsorship, and national media profile the institution desperately requires.
On the other track run the creative ‘gambles’. The financial breathing space generated by those star-studded juggernauts allows the RSC to fund ambitious, innovative, ensemble-driven experiments such as Middlemarch and Hamlet Hail to the Thief. The latter keep the doors open to less-established artists, but only just — the opportunity to join an ensemble of the famed, the undiscovered, and the just-started for a year or two of unrivalled experience is gone.
It is an uneasy compromise, but an effective one: the commercial heavyweights pay the electric bill so that the artists can take occasional risks.
Can Pitlochry realistically execute that same high-wire balancing act once Cumming surrenders his office?
The Succession Trap
The comparison exposes a sobering discrepancy. The RSC possesses three separate auditoriums, substantial Arts Council funding, and four centuries of Shakespearean heritage to keep the coach parties coming.
Pitlochry, by contrast, relies on a remote Highland setting and a modest allocation of public subsidy that demands relentless vigilance. The Festival that gives its name to its undeniably lovely building is no more; its ghost won’t keep the patrons coming.
Furthermore, Sonia Friedman Productions does not journey to Perthshire for the scenic woodland; commercial impresarios invest where bankable marquee names guarantee a return. When Cumming returns to Broadway, Hollywood, or the West End, will that commercial pipeline evaporate with him?
Here lies the succession trap. Having traded a self-contained, locally rooted ensemble for international star wattage, the board may find itself stranded on an exhausting treadmill.
To justify elevated ticket prices, international press interest, and ambitious commercial co-productions, they may be forced to look exclusively for another celebrity artistic director.
Yet genuine stage and screen luminaries who possess both the cultural buy-in and the administrative patience to steer a regional Scottish theatre do not arrive on every ScotRail service.
Neither Fish Nor Flesh
If that succession falters, the institutional hangover will…suck.
The resident ensemble craft will be gone, along with the specialised technical know-how needed to maintain rotating bills. Just as crucially, the core audience that once planned entire Highland holidays around seeing half a dozen different plays in a week will have drifted away.
Without an ensemble company to anchor its repertory identity, and without an A-lister to coax casual theatregoers two hours north of the Central Belt, the venue faces an acute crisis of purpose.
It risks becoming an expensive receiving house with scenic views: neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. It would be no longer a true repertory festival, yet fundamentally unable to compete with the sheer commercial heft of London or Edinburgh.
The Morning After
None of this critique is meant to spoil the party that Cumming is currently staging. Scottish theatre has suffered from timid thinking for far too long, and packing a Perthshire auditorium with world-class writing and celebrated performers remains a genuine achievement.
“Can Pitlochry realistically execute that same high-wire balancing act once Cumming surrenders his office?”
Reflecting on his upcoming 2027 slate, Cumming said: ‘I’m so excited that our ‘27 season is both celebrating icons like Dolly Parton and Alan Ayckbourn as well as spotlighting new Scottish writing and indeed launching the career of a new Scottish playwright! These works, alongside the previously announced Supernova with myself and Ewan McGregor, make for a season that is both innovative and familiar, international, and home-grown, and embodying the eclectic personality of the new era of Pitlochry Festival Theatre. And gird your loins – there’s more to come!’
The crowds will certainly keep coming, and they will rightly marvel at the spectacle.
Yet the measure of artistic directorship is never found in the roar of the auditorium while the star holds the stage. It is found in the life of the institution when the lights go down and the car parks empty out.
Alan Cumming has thrown a magnificent bash in the hills. The real drama will begin on the morning after.
Featured Image: 9 to 5 web banner
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