The sense of anticipation surrounding Alan Cumming‘s debut season as Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre has been palpable.  His star quality is matched by his ambition with a slate of bold and broad production choices, not least Once. The only play to win Tonys, Grammys, Oliviers and an Oscar (for best song in the movie version).

What’s more, Cumming has enticed the original production team, lock, stock and barrel to the Highlands.

In his programme notes John Tiffany, Scotland’s bona fide superstar director borrows from Pavel Pavlovský when he says that the stage production would be like, ‘catching a butterfly’. That’s because the musical is a delicate creature, with flighty unpredictability baked into the core of the story. It’s unconventional in many ways, not least that, ironically, the music is perhaps the weakest element of its whole.

Tiffany, and his go-to movement director, Steven Hoggett, succeed in weaving a magical spell with a cast of ten actor-musicians that gently blow the roof off the Pitlochry auditorium above a visually striking bar room set.  It’s a chequered hall of mirrors that reflect some of the most transcendent moments of the production by treating the audience to 360 degree views of the performance, especially through the massive Sports Bar-like refection that sits centre rear stage.

This is all enhanced by impeccable sound (Clive Goodwin) and lighting (Natasha Katz) that subtly caresses the stage and creates simple but effective landscapes for the two lead actors Dylan Wood (as Guy) and Lydia White (Girl) to tell their love, not love, story supported by a Greek Chorus of enthusiastic multi-instrumental ensemble players. Both Guy and Girl deliver compelling and believable performances as actors, singers and, musicians. This is no easy feat.

The story will be familiar to many and centres on the blossoming relationship between a shy, talented, but lovelorn, Irish singer songwriter (Guy) and a Teutonic Czech woman (Girl).  It teeters on the brink of a full-blown romance, that 99% of the audience surely craves, but circumstances keep consummation tantalisingly at bay.  It’s this unfulfilled desire that makes this an original and highly engaging story that keeps the audience guessing right until the truly wonderful finale in which the show’s stand out song, ‘Falling Slowly’, is reprised to very few dry eyes in the house.

Scotland’s more traditional theatres, like the Lyceum and now Pitlochry have been treated to a raft of fabulous new musicals over the past 12 months, including Tiffany’s Wild Rose and Max Webster’s spectacular One Day. This production easily stands shoulder to shoulder with these theatrical highlights and sets the bar high for Cumming’s bold and beautiful season.

At Pitlochry Festival Theatre until Sat 27 June