How Elizabeth Newman plans to stop Pitlochry Festival Theatre being seen as “a Perthshire outpost of English theatre”

Stay six days, see six plays. It’s always been the promise offered by Pitlochry Festival Theatre, ever since its early 1950s days in a giant marquee at Knockendarroch, on the other side of town from its current beautiful building on the banks of the River Tummel; and it’s one thing that new artistic director Elizabeth Newman will not be changing, as she opens her first Pitlochry season this weekend. The six plays in this year’s summer repertoire will open one by one, of course, between now and the end of August; but by September, it will be more than possible to see six plays in a single week, in a programme that includes plenty of uproarious showbiz fun – from this weekend’s opening production of Summer Holiday, through Noel Coward’s mighty comedy Blithe Spirit, to a Pitlochry take on Blonde Bombshells of 1943 – but also features some serious and intense work about nations and communities divided, whether by issues of class and wealth, faith or identity.