The High Life, Dundee review: 'a wild ride of a show' starring Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson

The High Life, Dundee Rep ★★★★

Oh dearie me! goes the famous catch-phrase of work-shy Air Scotia flight attendants Steve and Sebastian, in the 1990s cult hit sitcom The High Life. Thirty-two years on, though, it’s more like “Jings, crivvens, what just happened?” as Forbes Masson and Alan Cumming, with the able support of writer Johnny McKnight, unroll the mixture of razor-sharp humour and escalating surreal madness that is The High Life stage musical, produced by the National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts and Capital Theatres.

When famous double acts like Cumming and Masson decide to get the band back together, so many years on, the temptation is often to please the crowd by reprising their greatest hits, and leaving it at that.

There’s no hint of that here, though, in a show that’s essentially a plea for a Scotland that lives in the present and future, rather than the past; and that reinforces the point by showcasing a dazzling range of talent across Scottish theatrical generations, from the “legacy cast” of the 1990s - with Patrick Ryecart as dotty Captain Duff, and a funny and heartbreaking Siobhan Redmond as chief stewardess Shona, also rejoining the eleven-strong crew - to the hilarious Louise McCarthy as Steve’s long-lost squeeze Heather Argyll, and brilliant young stars-in-the-making including Kyle Gardner, Rachael Kendall Brown and Ciara Flynn.

As for the plot - well, it starts plausibly enough, as an ageing Steve and Sebastian hang around the airline office, Cumming’s Sebastian insouciant as ever, Masson’s Steve convinced they’re about to be replaced by AI, or worse. After a couple of funny and unflinchingly truthful songs (the show features 15 cheekily brilliant numbers, all written by Masson with additional lyrics by Cumming and McKnight), the news emerges that ailing Air Scotia has been bought by a mystery Fife-based oligarch, who wants to rename it Air GB, and is about to board that day’s flight from Prestwick to Gatwick.

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Cue much outrage from the staff, a rousing chorus of the company song, and a takeoff, followed fairly rapidly by a catastrophic incident over the Lower Largo Triangle, where flights disappear never to be seen again.

In the second half, the spirit of panto gets the upper hand, as the crashed and stranded crew find themselves - after the obligatory underwater sequence - in a Fife neuk stuck in the 1970s, where ginger-haired and tartan-clad natives munch on long-discontinued biscuit brands (Blue Riband, anyone?), and resolutely refuse any taint of modernity. Only Sebastian refuses to drink the orange-hued koolade with which these ginger MAGA types ply their victims; and after a couple of powerful songs - with Cumming’s singing voice and star voltage at full strength - everything gradually begins to come right again, in a more forward-looking 21st century Scotland.

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The songs are terrific, the aviation-based sound and lighting is clever and entertaining, the five-piece onstage band is unfailingly excellent. And if this is a show that can’t resist describing the present in which it wants us to live as the “och aye the noo”, so be it. For among other things, this cheeky, shark-jumping wild ride of a show is a love song to Scotland itself; as symbolised by a wee airline that would rather nosedive into an East Neuk beach, than lose its name, its identity, and its right to send itself up, to the last.

The High Life is at Dundee Rep until 4 April, and from 6-9 May; the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 7-11 April; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 14-18 April; Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 29 April-2 May; and the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, 12-23 May.

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