The Only Way Out Is In is a pretty unique one-woman show with a one person audience, in which Broughty Ferry actor Sharron Devine has collaborated with sound designer Ben Scappaticchio to wondrous multi-sensory effect.

The fact that this short, 30 minute show takes place in Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s elegant David Douglas Pavilion (he of Douglas fir fame) simply adds to the authenticity of the experience, perched, as it is, above the treetops in Pitlochry’s lovely Explorer Garden.

Much of this highly immersive performance involves a guided, blindfolded journey through Scappaticchio’s mixed urban and rural soundscape. This is further enhanced by many vivid, yet subtle introductions of natural aromas and even a sprinkling of rain. It’s a sensual experience like few others.

The performance is a treatise on consumerism, (do we really need so much STUFF?), but this provocation is handled deftly with no overpowering political agenda. Instead, it gently seduces its audiences with a mellifluous spa-like experience.

No two shows can be the same because Devine skilfully draws in her supplicants by inviting them to influence their own performance in a first act of self-discovery.

Devine’s obvious love of Japanese culture comes to the fore early as she demonstrates the country’s art of Kintsugi, or Golden Joinery, which is about celebrating broken objects (broken lives?) by fixing them with a deliberately visible golden adhesive, or in Japan, actual gold. This makes a virtue of the damaged possession, because the repaired objects look better than when they were intact. It validates her antipathy of consumerism and built-in obsolescence.

In a world, and a time, where everything feels a bit broken and long term commitment seems unattainable, Devine’s exploration of Kintsugi, of the joys of nature, of self reflection, of fixing stuff, no matter how unfashionable or challenging, leaves her audience with much on which to reflect in a post-show warm down, chilled and in an illuminated frame of mind.

This is spiritual theatre at its finest. It’s exquisitely personal and, for some, could be deeply moving.

The Only Way Out is In is at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from Sun 28 Jun 2026