Pitlochry Festival Theatre opens its 60th summer season

May 13 2011 by Alison Anderson, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

PITLOCHRY Festival Theatre launches its 60th Anniversary Season tonight with the perfectly ‘loverly’ musical, My Fair Lady

From actors, musicians, designers and directors to carpenters, scenic artists, technicians and stage managers – there’s been a feverish whirl of activity at PFT, with final adjustments being made before Scotland’s renowned Theatre in the Hills opens its doors for its 60th anniversary Summer Season of six plays.

It was the vision and determination of one avid theatregoer – John Stewart – for which 21st century audiences must be grateful when they visit what has become a national theatrical treasure, set in its spectacular landscape overlooking the River Tummel and hills and moorland beyond.

The story of PFT’s creation in 1951 is suitably dramatic.

Stewart was determined to create a rural Festival Theatre for Scotland which would rival those he had visited in England. But in post-war Britain building materials were rationed – the Ministry of Works would license only essential building projects.

Stewart, however, refused to be beaten – and in a splendid piece of lateral thinking, he decided that his theatre would instead sit inside a giant tent!

And so it was that on May 19, 1951, Pitlochry Festival Theatre – the Theatre in a Tent – opened in the grounds of Knockendarroch House with the British première of Maxwell Anderson’s Mary Of Scotland, a very youthful Joss Ackland appearing as Darnley.

Since then, PFT has survived and prospered, despite facing one challenge after another.

In 1952, a fierce autumn storm ripped the tent and threatened the continued existence of the fledging theatre.

In 1957, John Stewart died unexpectedly. His trusted lieutenant, Kenneth Ireland, had to take over at short notice.

By the late 1960s, it became apparent that a purpose-built theatre was vital to PFT’s future. Somehow, during the dark recessionary days of the 1970s, the funds were raised to create a new theatre on the banks of the River Tummel – complete with its iconic glass wall – which opened 30 years to the day after that first performance in the tent.

Despite this triumph, difficult times in the early-to-mid 1980s saw PFT brought to the brink of closure, before Clive Perry came to the rescue.

Since then PFT has gone from strength-to-strength, thanks largely to continuous investment in its facilities over the last 20 years.

The improved facilities and bold programming have seen it become a year-round operation, with an ever expanding range of productions.

Major developments to the PFT programme in recent years include the Winter Words Festival, the hugely popular move to launch the summer season with a musical and the debut last winter of a Christmas show.

It’s not all wall-to-wall sunshine though: PFT is having to cope with the widespread changes to arts funding in Scotland and the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

But John Stewart’s fighting spirit lives on, and everyone is looking forward to curtain up to PFT’s 60th Summer Season.

PFT’s chief executive and artistic director, John Durnin, took a rare break from the rehearsal room, where four productions are rehearsing side by side, to explain: “It was quite a challenge to put together the 2011 programme.

“A sense of history and tradition is very strong at PFT. We still have audience members who attended that very first season in 1951.

“So there were lots of approaches we could have used: reviving one show from each decade of PFT’s history, for example, or perhaps programming plays which were premièred in each of PFT’s birthday years – 1951, 1961 and so on.

“But to be able to reflect some of the changes which have occurred over the last 60 years, I thought that it would be more interesting to build part of the season around plays which were either written during or about the period when PFT came into being – the post-war years of the 1940s and 1950s – and use the rest of the programme to reflect PFT’s more recent style of repertoire, which now includes things like musicals.

“Most important, though, was the need to ensure that the plays we chose represented the kinds of work our audiences have most enjoyed over the years: after all, without the support of the millions of loyal and dedicated theatre-goers who have visited PFT year after year, we wouldn’t be here now.

“So the 60th Anniversary programme is also something of a ‘thank you’ to all those who have supported us.

“A big musical, something by Ayckbourn, who is the most popular living playwright at PFT, and a large-scale period comedy – one of PFT’s trademarks – were the first things I settled on.

“Somehow, we’ve managed to get the rights to My Fair Lady, which are usually almost impossible to obtain – and musicals don’t come much bigger than this!

“We’ve also programmed the Scottish première of Ayckbourn’s wildly inventive comedy, Henceforward, which features all the usual Ayckbournian twists, turns and laughs.

“The great Victorian playwright Arthur Wing Pinero has been another consistent favourite of PFT’s audiences over the years, and I was surprised to discover that PFT had never staged his most famous and popular comedy, Trelawny Of The ‘Wells’, a romantic comedy which is a sort-of Victorian Noises Off. So that had to be in, as well.

“More of James Bridie’s plays have been performed at PFT over the years than any other playwright. And as he was such a pivotal figure in the birth of the modern Scottish theatre, I knew his work would have to feature. His dark comedy-thriller from 1947, Dr Angelus, the story of a murderous Glaswegian GP originally played by Alistair Sim, was ideal for the anniversary programme.

“See How They Run!, Philip King’s classic 1945 farce, almost selected itself: a staple of British theatres in the 1940s and 1950s. It captures that lost world perfectly – and our audiences have always loved good farce.

“The final piece in the jigsaw is a modern classic which harks back to the 1940s, Peter Nichols’s Privates On Parade, a bawdy and outrageously funny musical memoir of his National Service days alongside Kenneth Williams and Stanley Baxter during the Malayan Emergency.”

Come mid-summer when all six productions are running, PFT can still blazon its slogan’ Stay six days, see six plays’.

At the moment the 18-strong acting company and all the productions teams are in a whirl of rehearsing four productions side by side.

What is certain is that when curtain goes up on My Fair Lady tonight, the audience will welcome PFT’s trademark gorgeous costumes and sumptuous sets with their customary round of appreciative applause – it’s a tradition which continues thanks to the vision of John Stewart 60 years ago, the resolve by PFT today to maintain his high standards – and not forgetting the continued support of PFT’s loyal audiences.