The High Life musical at Dundee Rep and on tour – review

There was still an air of sophistication in aviation when The High Life was first broadcast on BBC Scotland in 1994 – crystal glasses still clinked on Concorde and bottles of Bollinger over 100ml could still be crammed into a Chanel carry-on handbag. But in the decades since, the glitz and the glamour of flying has been reduced to clear-plastic bags, £7 charges for a cheese toastie and the threat of paying a euro to spend a penny.

And now, over 20 years later, the adorable pairing of Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson have returned to the drinks trolley in an endearing musical reprise of the roles they played as young(er) men. Here, the air stewards of Scotia Air, “Scotland’s Best (and only) Airline”, serve catastrophe as their company faces a hostile takeover from a soulless British corporation, forcing them to confront their own sense of growing older as the business struggles to survive in a modern world.

This two-hour long flight of fancy plays with the tropes of aviation without becoming a cliché: yes, passengers will expect jokes about turbulence at 30,000 feet and Robinson Crusoe beach scene subplots; no, passengers will not expect biting political satire and quips about Cumming’s recent hosting of the BAFTAs.

Here, artistic director Andrew Panton has assembled an outstanding comic cast that pushes their luck with every joke. With the loveable Masson as his foil, Cumming is a constant joy, purring his Tony-winning voice through the show’s poppy and energetic score and flirting with the audience in a face of foundation that he might have found in Claudia’s bathroom in the Traitors’ castle. Siobhan Redmond, too, commands the stage with the strength of her lacquered beehive and Louise McCarthy maintains her place as one of the funniest comedy actors in contemporary Scottish theatre.

The final leading performance is Johnny McKnight’s hilarious and sharp script, crashing the past and the present with a naughty sense of nostalgia. McKnight’s pantomime humour struts the stage in a dame’s gown, breaking the fourth wall with a squeaky sledgehammer and gleefully signposting developments in the plot with placards larger than the ones Wile E Coyote flashes before he falls off a cliff.

The result is a riotously funny Caledonian joke book which plays to the local crowd’s sense of humour but which would struggle to climb Hadrian’s Wall. Still, its willingness to “Parliamo Glasgow” and capture ideas of what Scotland was in the nineties in Irn-Bru coloured amber is a constant delight.

With only seven episodes in its overhead locker, The High Life: The Musical struggles with some ideas which may have shifted in transit in the 30 years since its broadcast. Unlike Scottish comedies like Rab C Nesbitt or Still Game which have more successfully crossed into the popular imagination, a few of the callbacks to the original series might feel alienating to less familiar audiences. Some of its humour, too, flies a little too close to SleazyJet and at times undermines the cleverness of the text.

Nonetheless, The High Life:The Musical is a hilarious, camp and fun production which soars from take off until landing, transporting passengers both old and new on a fun ride through sunny skies.