Exclusive:Alan Cumming: Scotland needs to 'give Shakespeare another go'

Scotland needs to "give Shakespeare another go" Alan Cumming has said, as he hinted at plans for a second production by the Bard for Pitlochry Festival Theatre next year starring a "major Scottish actor".

Lear, starring Maureen Beattie in the title role in a new adaptation of King Lear, opens at Pitlochry next week, where Cumming is artistic director.

Traitors US host Cumming said he wanted to update Shakespearean plays for a modern audience. His professional theatre debut was as Malcolm in Macbeth at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow in 1985.

He admitted that Lear is likely to initially be a hard sell for Pitlochry, saying he does not expect full auditoriums, but that staging the plays are "something I want to do".

He said: “I don’t quite understand why Shakespeare hasn’t been performed so much in Scotland of late, I’m not sure why.

“I think he’s fallen out of favour and I’m excited to try to bring him back in a way that is more exciting and more relevant and more theatrical and Scottish and try to regenerate interest in him.”

Lear, which opens at Pitlochry on 4 July for a month-long run, is adapted and directed by Finn den Hertog.

The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh this month announced a new production of Romeo and Juliet for its coming season, while the play is also currently being performed in a sell-out London run with Stranger Things actor Sadie Sink in the title role.

Cumming said: “I always ask why do we do these classic plays and the answer is they still have things they are saying that are really important. I feel we’ve really lost sight of that and think he’s not relevant, whereas all the messages, all the stories, are about stuff that we need to hear and be reminded of.”

He added: “I think it will take a while, I don’t think we are going to get packed houses every night for Lear, I think it’s going to take people a while to understand what we’re trying to do. Some things take longer and people are not used to seeing Shakespeare.

“But as a country, I feel like we are so good at Shakespeare. I grew up and started in the theatre surrounded by great Shakespeare productions in Scotland and I feel we should give it another go.”

Actor, writer and presenter Alan Cumming at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. | PA

He said he already had plans for another Shakespeare production for next year, featuring a “very major, young Scottish actor”.

Mr den Hertog said he believed audiences needed to be “less daunted” by Shakespeare.

He said: “The thing that scares people off Shakespeare, that there is this academic weight to it.

”But it’s a piece of entertainment. People believe it’s for a certain type of person, that it can be dry and academic and if you don’t understand the references, it’s not for you. But ultimately we have to make the story understandable for the audience. These plays are evergreen for a reason.”

He said when adapting the play for Lear, which in its entirety, could run to around 3.5 hours, he had to treat the script with “not too much reverence”, adding that the play would have been performed in a different way in Shakespeare’s time.

He said: “It would have been performed over something like half a day, it was like a festival event. We’ve got to cut it down, make it punchy. It’s a thriller.”