Alan Cumming announced as new Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Scottish actor, singer, writer, producer and director Alan Cumming has been announced as the new artistic director of Perthshire’s Pitlochry Festival Theatre (PFT).

Cumming will succeed Elizabeth Newman, who is leaving to become artistic director of Sheffield Theatres (you can read our interview with Newman, who joined PFT in 2019, in the June/July 2024 issue of Musicals). Cumming will take up the role in January 2025, with his first programmed season taking place in 2026.

As a Musical Theatre performer, Cumming is famed for his role as the Emcee in Cabaret, which he first played in Sam Mendes’s production at the Donmar Warehouse in 1993, which he repeated on Broadway in 1998, earning him a Tony. He reprised the role on Broadway in 2014. He also played Macheath in The Threepenny Opera on Broadway in 2006. On television, Cumming played the closeted Mayor Aloysius Menlove and the Sweeney Tood-inspired Dooley Blight in Apple TV+’s musical pastiche Schmigadoon and its follow-up Schmicago. 

This winter, PFT presents The Sound of Music from 15 November to 22 December. Musical Theatre productions scheduled for the 2025 summer repertory season include Grease and new musical Nessie by Shonagh Murray, in which 11-year-old budding biologist Mara encounters the Loch Ness Monster and survives to tell the tale. 

For information and tickets, visit pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com