William Wallace hip hop musical to tour Scotland next year

Raw Material will tour Wallace: A Musical in 2026 following its sell-out debut at A Play, A Pie and A Pint earlier this year.

The full production reunites playwright Rob Drummond, rapper-composer Dave Hook and director Orla O’Loughlin, who will take the show on tour from 23 September to 3 October 2026.

The new staging takes aim at Scotland’s most familiar national myth, interrogating whether William Wallace should be remembered as a hero, a rebel or a story shaped by the centuries that followed him. The creative team’s approach replaces the expected imagery with a hip-hop score that fuses rap, folk, pop and rock while keeping a distinctly Scottish voice.

Hook, who created the score and lyrics, said: “Hip hop is folk music, representing its surroundings and drawing out stories woven into the fabric of a place. Wordplay around language, dialect and accent feature in all sorts of ways in everyday Scottish life. Wallace gives us the opportunity to tell stories, ask questions and make connections across centuries of Scottish history, finding reflections and refractions in historical characters and contemporary lives.”

O’Loughlin added: “The invitation to bring Wallace to the stage felt both irresistible and impossible – Irresistible in that it meant collaborating with the incredible Rob and Dave and in doing so assemble a ridiculously skilled ensemble of actors – Impossible in that we had 2 weeks to create it. The overwhelming response to the original production at Oran Mor however, proved that this exhilarating mix of mythology and history, despair and hope, high drama and pure comedy, speaks directly to contemporary Scotland – a rallying political cry, wrapped up in an extraordinarily good night out!”

The run begins at the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock, where the production will play on Wednesday 23 September. The tour then continues to the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow from Friday 25 to Saturday 26 September, and concludes at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh from Wednesday 30 September to Saturday 3 October.