“Lear” at Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Mark Brown in Highland Perthshire
★★★★★
28 July 2026 

Alan Cumming’s first season as artistic director at Pitlochry Festival Theatre (which – nestled in the foothills of the Scottish Highlands – is, surely, one of the world’s most beautifully situated playhouses) is, to my mind, the most exciting to be programmed at a Caledonian repertory theatre in many a year. The sheer ambition and quality of the season is exemplified by this gender-switched Lear, which is, without a word of exaggeration, a truly world class rendering of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Maureen Beattie.
Photo credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

Staged by accomplished Scottish actor-turned-director Finn den Hertog, this modern dress production is characterised by a confident, coherent vision, a brilliant visual imagination and universally excellent performances. Had Margaret Thatcher not eschewed trousers during her premierships she might have looked very much like the outstanding Maureen Beattie’s “Royal Lear” when she first strides onto the stage, power-suited, her hair coiffed very much like that of the Iron Lady in her prime ministerial pomp.

The comparison – in what is, very possibly, one of the greatest performances of Beattie’s distinguished career – goes well beyond hairdressing. This Queen Lear is resolutely “not for turning” when – in her famously misguided fit of narcissism – she splits her kingdom between her disingenuously obsequious daughters Goneril and Regan, disenfranchising the loyal and honest Cordelia.

When – in the ensuing chaos and betrayal – Lear realises that her power has all but slipped away, she is remarkably reminiscent of the tearful Thatcher departing Downing Street for the final time in November 1990. This dramatic, largely self-inflicted decline (in Acts I and II) flows into a mental ill-health that (in the play’s remaining three acts) is – with great intensity and sensitivity – connected to the all-too-familiar cruelties of dementia.

Maureen Beattie and Ailsa Davidson.
Photo credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

By the time, in the piece’s affecting denouement, Beattie’s Lear appears – tender and regretful – in a wheelchair, it is clear that den Hertog’s production has navigated quite brilliantly the reductive dangers (which are inherent in the play) regarding “madness”. Such excellent decision making is evident across the piece.

Emma Bailey’s designs – from the grand, symbolically semi-derelict room of the first half to Ailsa Davidson’s gloriously costumed (and smartly performed) Fool – are constantly compelling (and cleverly lit by Kai Fischer). Mark Melville’s score of sound and music (complete with compositions by young Scottish piper Brìghde Chaimbeul) is splendidly atmospheric.

The exceptional cast overflows with acting talent, from Forbes Masson’s amiable, dubious and, finally, agonisingly pitiable Gloucester to Mercy Ojelade’s insightful and steadfast Kent, and Dylan Read’s sympathetic, shape-changing Edgar. All of which accumulates in a faithful, intelligent, thoughtful and resoundingly modern Lear.

Until 1 August: pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com