Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

I thought I might be jinxed, never to see the musical theatre adaptation of Bill Forsyth’s charming film homage to Scotland. The run at The Old Vic was cancelled during the pandemic and on an earlier visit to Chichester there was a mix up with dates and I had to return home without seeing it. Fortunately, it was third time lucky.

Set in Ferness, a fictional Scottish coastal town, it takes place at the time of the North Sea oil boom. An American company wants to buy the entire village to build a terminal and refinery and despatches executive Mac MacIntyre to do a deal with the local community. Most want to sell, but beachcomber Ben and Stella, the girlfriend of the pub landlord (and unofficial negotiator) Gordon, are against. Mac grows fond of Ferness, and Stella, helped along by copious quantities of Scotch whisky. His boss, oil company CEO Happer is a keen amateur astronomer and has asked him to investigate the possibility of naming a comet while he’s there; the local skies are renowned for comets it seems. The negotiations progress well, then hit a big snag, but when Happer arrives from Houston things take a very different turn.

It’s difficult to conjure up a Scottish coastal village with its beach, sea and spectacular skies inside a theatre, but they do the best they can with the help of some real sand, excellent projections & lighting for the skies and of course a red phone box. The transformation from the Houston office to the beach is superbly choreographed. I think it would have been better in the larger space of the Festival Theatre, though, which would have opened it out and given it a bigger canvas. Mark Knopfler’s score is serviceable, but not as evocative as I was hoping and expecting. David Greig has done a good job adapting the film for the stage, necessarily focusing on just the Houston office, the beach and the pub, cutting the visit to the Aberdeen office.

I was a little unsure of it at first, but it charmed me and won me over in the end. A lot of this was down to a fine cast, extremely well led by Gabriel Ebert as Mac, a character who is also charmed. Paul Higgins is very good as the canny landlord / accountant, as is Lillie Flynn as Stella. In a fine supporting cast, Hilton McRae as beachcomber Ben, Joshua Manning as ‘Russian capitalist’ Viktor, Jackie Morrison as Mistress Fraser and Liz Ewing as Netta all delight

I’m very glad I got to see it in the end as I’m not sure it will have a life beyond Chichester, except perhaps on tour