Out and About: Scots the Musical at His Majesty’s Theatre

Scots the Musical began as an Edinburgh Fringe show and is now touring Scotland’s main stages. Created by duo Noisemaker, it moves through Scottish history from the Picts and Celts to the fight for gay rights, all narrated by what the show claims is the country’s greatest invention: the toilet.

The toilet as narrator is properly daft, and the show leans into it. The ensemble cast, backed by a live band, covers the Declaration of Arbroath, the Scottish Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, women’s suffrage, the battle for gay rights, and Scotland’s status as the first country in the world to offer free sanitary products to all. It does this in an hour and a half, which suggests the pacing is relentless.

What makes a country

The central question running through the show is straightforward: what makes a country? Writers Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie describe Scots as “a love letter to home,” one that traces “the dramatic, the democratic, and the downright ludicrous shifts” a country undergoes from its inception to the present. The show moves from the joining of the Gaelic and Pictish kingdoms through to the invention of the toaster, which gives some sense of how wide a net it casts.

Aberdeen Performing Arts chief executive Sharon Burgess calls it “a quirky, hilarious whirlwind of a production, taking us on a whistle-stop tour of Scotland’s history in a lively and fun hour and a half.” She also added that "It’s fantastic to see an original Scottish production grow from a Fringe hit to a full-blown national touring production.”