The National Theatre of Scotland at 20: two decades of highlights
Over the last 20 years, the National Theatre of Scotland has staged over 8,500 live performances of 342 unique productions. Here, Susan Mansfield revisits some of the highlights
Since its launch in February 2006, National Theatre of Scotland has staged everything from groundbreaking experimental theatre to sell-out crowd-pleasers. In accordance with its aim to bring theatre to the people, it has worked across the length and breadth of Scotland, from school rooms and village halls to the country’s biggest theatres.
Its productions have appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe, have travelled to the West End and around the world, all the while supporting the careers of Scottish actors and theatre practitioners. Here are 20 of its most memorable shows.
HOME Exactly 20 years ago, in February 2006, NTS created an extraordinary launch: ten site-specific productions across Scotland on the theme of Home. Locations ranged from an 18-storey tower block in Glasgow to a disused glass factory in Caithness and the MV Hjaltland ferry in Shetland, where performance times were dictated by the ferry’s timetable.
BLACK WATCH The NTS made its debut on the Edinburgh Fringe in style in August 2006, launching one of its most successful productions ever. Gregory Burke’s play, based on the testimonies of Scottish soldiers in Iraq, was directed by John Tiffany and movement director Steven Hoggett. From its beginnings in a former drill hall in Edinburgh, it toured the world until 2013, gathering awards as it went, including an Olivier for Best Director for Tiffany.
THE BACCHAE “I’m back,” said Alan Cumming as he made his entrance, upside-down, from above, as Dionysus in a new version of The Bacchae for Edinburgh International Festival in 2007. It marked his return to the Scottish stage after 15 years in the US, working with John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett on a script by David Grieg. The show transferred to the Lincoln Centre in New York.
THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART David Greig’s play-with-music, about an uptight academic who goes on a dreamlike border-ballad-infused journey of self-discovery became one of NTS’ most enduring successes. After a low-key beginning at the Tron Theatre’s Victorian Bar in February 2011, Prudencia Hart toured Scotland, then the US, Canada and Australia, with a five-month run at the McKittrick Hotel in New York in 2016-7.
MACBETH In 2012, Alan Cumming returned to star in a radical one-man version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth directed by John Tiffany and Andrew Goldberg. Cumming plays a psychiatric patient channeling Shakespeare’s characters in a coldly effective clinical set designed by Merle Hensel. After 17 performances at Tramway, the show became the first NTS production to be staged on Broadway.
DRAGON Scotland-based theatre company Vox Motus and Tianjin People’s Art Theatre, China, partnered with NTS to make this wordless production for young people in 2013. Written by Oliver Emanuel and directed by Vox Motus’ Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison, it used puppetry, music and illusion to tell a story of loss and healing. The show won the Best Show for Children and Young People at the UK Theatre Awards and toured to China.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett returned to the NTS in 2013 to make the first stage adaption of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s vampire story, relocating the action from Sweden to Scotland. The story of a lonely teenage boy and his friendship with a vampire was adapted by Jack Thorne, now best known as the co-writer of Adolescence, and transferred to the West End and New York.
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THE JAMES PLAYS Rona Munro’s trilogy about the Stuart kings, a co-production with Edinburgh International Festival and the National Theatre of Great Britain in 2014, remains one of the NTS’ most ambitious productions. The 20-strong ensemble, directed by Laurie Sansom, was augmented by Danish actress Sophie Gråbøl, fresh from her leading role in Scandi crime drama The Killing, to play James III’s wife. A fourth part of the series, James IV: Queen of the Fight, was made in 2022.
OUR LADIES OF PERPETUAL SUCCOUR Founding artistic director Vicky Featherstone returned to the NTS to direct Lee Hall’s rollicking stage adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel, The Sopranos in 2015. This feisty piece of gig theatre about six West of Scotland schoolgirls running amok in Edinburgh sold out before it opened on the Fringe and garnered 11 five-star reviews. On its London transfer, it won an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.
THE 306 In another ambitious trilogy, part of the 14-18 NOW programme marking the centenary of the First World War, the NTS explored the stories of the 306 British soldiers executed for cowardice, desertion and mutiny. Dawn (2016), directed by Laurie Sansom in a barn in Perthshire, was followed by Day (2017) and Dusk (2018). Writer Oliver Emanuel and composer Gareth Williams worked on all three productions.
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MY LEFT/RIGHT FOOT Written and directed by Robert Softley Gale, this bolshie satirical musical shook up perceptions around disability and inclusion with the story of a local am-dram company desperate to comply with the equalities agenda. A co-production with Birds of Paradise Theatre Company, it was a sell-out on the 2018 Fringe, winning Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards.
FUTUREPROOF Since the groundbreaking Transform productions of its early years, the NTS has developed a reputation for ambitious projects in schools and communities. Futureproof, in 2018, brought leading artists and theatre practitioners to ten Scottish youth theatres, creating new productions from a dance production in the National Museum of Scotland to a short film in Dundee.
THE PANOPTICON Scotsman critic Joyce Macmillan described Jenni Fagan’s 2019 adaptation of her first novel as “blazing with brilliance throughout”. Directed by Debbie Hannan, and set in a young offenders unit, the story of 15-year-old Anais Hendricks was a powerful critique of the failings of the care system, winning a CATS Award for Best Female Performance for lead actor Anna Russell Martin.
GHOST LIGHT/SCENES FOR SURVIVAL When theatres were forced to shut their doors in 2020, the NTS commissioned filmmaker Hope Dickson Leach to make Ghost Light, a poignant “love letter to theatre”, as part of EIF’s lockdown programme. A larger project, Scenes for Survival, ran throughout lockdown supporting 55 films made by Scottish writers, performers and directors, together attracting 22 million views online from 52 countries.
LAMENT FOR SHEKU BAYOH Written and directed by Hannah Lavery, this play staged in 2021 live and online, paid tribute to the 31-year-old trainee gas engineer who died after being restrained by police in Kirkcaldy in 2015. It powerfully addressed the Black Lives Matter moment in Scotland, described as “a non-apologetic reflection on identity and racism in Scotland today”.
MEDEA Adura Onashile took the lead role in this new staging of Liz Lochhead’s award-winning adaptation with an ensemble of 14 directed by Michael Boyd. Of the acclaimed production at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2022, Scotsman critic Joyce Macmillan wrote that “it has never been delivered with more ominous force”.
KIDNAPPED Isobel McArthur, the creative force behind Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) wrenched Stevenson’s classic into the 21st century in 2023 by reimagining it as a swashbuckling queer rom-com. Gareth Nicholls’ production had, in the words of one critic, “just enough irreverence to make it fun” and a lively pop score devised by Michael John McCarthy.
DRACULA: MINA’S RECKONING The NTS’s reputation for creating fresh takes on the classics continued with 2023’s production of Bram Stoker’s tale told by an all-female/non-binary ensemble. Writer Morna Pearson shifts the action to the North-east of Scotland where Mina recounts her story from a psychiatric hospital, and the women make a colourful attack on the patriarchal society which confines them.
DEAR BILLY Gary McNair spent years researching his “love letter to the Big Yin” before weaving hundreds of interviews into a piece of verbatim theatre. He proved to have a surprising resemblance to Billy Connolly in the 2023 show, directed by Joe Douglas, which evolved as it toured, concluding a run of sell-out performances and five-star reviews with a run at Glasgow’s Kings Theatre.
MAKE IT HAPPEN The 2025 Edinburgh International Festival opened with James Graham’s new play, bringing Brian Cox back to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade. Cox played Adam Smith, the hero of RBS boss Fred “the Shred” Goodwin (played by Sandy Grierson), as the play delved deep into the moment which put Scotland at the centre of the 2008 financial crash.
For full details of the National Theatre of Scotland’s 20th anniversary season, visit www.nationaltheatrescotland.com. This feature was produced in association with the National Theatre of Scotland.
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