Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh announce the world première of Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape, a bold, funny, and deeply thoughtful new play by award winning Scottish playwright Peter Arnott about family and the forces that shape Scotland today.
Directed by Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh’s Artistic Director David Greig, Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape will have its world première at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 25 August to 28 September and then transfer to the Royal Lyceum from 4 to 14 October.
Set in a Perthshire country house during the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014, Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape revolves around retired academic and political heavyweight George Rennie, and his fractured family and former students, coming together for a dramatic reckoning. There are secrets to be exposed and truths to be told.
Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape is an exploration of a way of life that is coming to its end, a family struggling to connect in the wake of political pain, the experience of grief, and the beginnings, and endings of great love affairs.
The exciting cast will feature John Michie (DI Robbie Ross in Taggart and Karl Munro in Coronation Street, both on ITV, and Guy Self in Holby City, BBC) as Rennie; Sally Reid (PC Sarah Fletcher in Scot Squad, BBC Scotland and Shirley Valentine, Pitlochry Festival Theatre) as Emma; Nalini Chetty (Cyrano, Citizens Theatre/NTS, Zinnie Hassoun in River City, BBC and ITV Drama Six-Four) as Jitka; Benny Young (Monarch of the Glen, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Don Quixote – Man of Clackmannanshire, Dundee Rep and Perth Theatre, as well as appearing in the Oscar winning films Chariots of Fire and Out of Africa (opposite Robert Redford and Meryl Streep) as Moon; Deirdre Davis (Eileen Donachie in River City, BBC Scotland and Monarch of The Glen, Pitlochry Festival Theatre) as Edie; Matthew Trevannion (War Horse, National Theatre, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, West End and Othello, Frantic Assembly) as Charlie; Keith Macpherson (Waiting for Godot, Citizens Theatre and Stan and Ollie, BBC Films) as Frank; Patricia Panther (Orphans and Glasgow Girls, National Theatre of Scotland) as Kath and Robbie Scott (Gypsy, Pitlochry Festival Theatre) as Will.
The production is designed by Jessica Worrall, with lighting by Simon Wilkinson and sound by Pippa Murphy.
Playwright Peter Arnott is the writer of some 50 professionally produced stage plays including his adaptation of the novel Monarch of the Glen (Pitlochry Festival Theatre), which won the CATS Award for Best New Scottish Play of 2017/18, The Breathing House (Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh), Tay Bridge (Dundee Rep), Janis Joplin: Full Tilt (Theatre Royal Stratford East) and The Signalman (Traverse) which won the CATS award for 2019/20.
Peter Arnott said: “Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape is, for me, both a welcome return to Pitlochry, and the chance to do a big new play about who we are, where we’ve just been, and where we might go now.”
The play is about the complex history behind every family snapshot. In this instance, an ultra-liberal well-educated and well-fed Scottish family with a summer house in Perthshire, living the perfect life in the perfect place at the perfect time.
The truth is that I’ve been thinking about these people for so long…since the end of the 1980s, in fact, that their lives and mine (and ours, I hope) are all so intertwined by now that I can’t tell where reality stops, and fiction begins. They are very real to me, and, with an outstanding ensemble of actors, I am thrilled that their reality will soon be taking on three dimensions in front of an audience!”
Director David Greig added:
“I am really thrilled that The Lyceum and Pitlochry Festival Theatre are collaborating again after our successful work with Sound Stage during the pandemic, continuing a partnership that started in 2020 with ‘Barefoot in the Park’. It is very appropriate that we are collaborating on this particular new play which is set in a country house in Kinloch Rannoch. The collaboration between Pitlochry Festival Theatre, their summer ensemble and The Lyceum allows us to realise a big, ambitious family drama set in contemporary Scotland. This will be the first play I have directed since Glory on Earth in 2017 and I’m really excited by the chance to explore Peter’s play which is clever, thoughtful, and infused with a comic melancholy. It’s a play about time and about our times in particular. It’s an incredible privilege to be able to show it to audiences in Pitlochry and Edinburgh.”
Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape runs at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 25 August to 28 September. Tickets are now on sale and are available from the Pitlochry Festival Theatre Box Office on 01796 484626 or online at www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com.
