Lyceum director James Brining on Scotland's changing theatre landscape
As Edinburgh’s Lyceum theatre launches its 2026/27 season, artistic director James Brining reflects on the changes sweeping the industry. Interview by Joyce McMillan
James Brining, artistic director of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre, is one of theatre’s happy warriors, always genial, and never less than positive. He’s also clearly delighted to be back in Scotland, after a stellar directing career that has taken him from the Citizens’ small-scale touring company TAG, in 1990s Glasgow, to a hugely successful decade at Dundee Rep, and a momentous dozen years at the Playhouse in his home city of Leeds.
Yet Brining had some hard truths to share, when he launched his new 2026-27 season at the Lyceum last week; truths about the cumulative impact on Scottish theatre of almost two decades of soaring costs, accompanied by general austerity in public support for the arts.
“We hugely appreciate the substantial increase in our Creative Scotland three-year funding that was announced last year,” said Brining, “and indeed some of my friends in England could hardly believe it, when I told them the scale of it.
“But welcome though that is, it just can’t alter the fact that the scene is very different from when I first arrived in Scotland in the 1990s. Then, alongside the building-based theatres, there were four or five big, permanently funded touring companies staging three or four productions a year; and in 2002, the Lyceum could afford to stage a full production of Guys And Dolls, with a cast of 22, as part of its own regular season.
“Whereas this year, in order to stage a new production of Guys And Dolls for next spring, we have had to put together a co-production involving ourselves, the Citizens’ Theatre, Dundee Rep, Eden Court in Inverness, and Aberdeen Performing Arts - five major companies, all presenting the same show next year.
“Now it’s great that we’ve been able to get that project together,” says Brining, “and I can’t wait to direct what’s surely one of the greatest musicals ever written. But there are huge consequences to the fact that such an intense level of co-production is necessary, to keep producing at scale; and that inevitably means change in the way we run our theatres.”
One of those consequences, says Brining, is that it is now more difficult for theatres to offer a conventional in-house fixed subscription season to regular theatre-goers, since the various co-producing companies will be announcing the productions, putting them on sale, and opening them, at different points in the year.
The Lyceum is therefore moving from subscription towards a membership-based model, in which Lyceum members will receive early information and booking opportunities on the whole range of work presented at the Lyceum, from in-house productions to visiting shows, one-off comedy nights, and “in conversation” sessions such as the Lyceum’s recent hugely successful evenings with David Tennant and Sam Heughan.
The 26-27 season opens in September, for example, with a chance for Lyceum audiences to catch up with Matthew Zajac’s superb 2008 solo drama The Tailor Of Inverness, about Zajac’s father’s infinitely complex wartime journey from the borderlands of Poland and Ukraine to Inverness, and its lingering impact down the generations.
The autumn then alternates between between already-announced Lyceum co-productions The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie - in partnership with the National Theatre of Scotland - and 1984, co-produced with the Citizens’ and Dundee, and visiting shows including top English company Kneehigh’s version of Tristan And Yseult; followed by the Lyceum’s festive production of A Christmas Carol, one of only two Lyceum-only productions during the year.
Then in the spring, there are two more co-productions - a new Romeo And Juliet, and that mighty Guys And Dolls - followed by a final Lyceum-only show, a new version of Mother Courage adapted and directed by Zinnie Harris. There are also two visiting family shows, featuring The Gruffalo and friendly dragon Zog. And there will, says Brining, be more shows and projects announced later; as the new producing landscape opens up odd weeks that can be filled with visiting work or pop-up events, at relatively short notice.
“I’ve had some clear priorities in programming this season,” says Brining. “One is the basic commitment to produce theatre of scale, to the highest standard, here in Edinburgh, and it’s my job to ensure that we can continue to do that. Another is our contribution to the whole Scottish theatre ecology, as we build and often lead the partnerships we need. All of us, in Scottish theatre, are aware that these changes mean a serious decline in the number of opportunities available to freelance theatre workers in Scotland, and we’re determined to do what we can to remedy that. Here at the Lyceum, for example, we’re just created a new post of trainee artistic director, to try to give at least one young director the kind of opportunity I had when I was starting out.
“Then there’s the priority of expanding and diversifying our audience, across Edinburgh and beyond. Our programme of work - including the comedy nights and everything else - is our lever for doing that; and it’s fascinating, for example, to see how a show like our recent musical One Day, which may have been our best seller in 60 years of the Lyceum Company, attracts a much younger audience, more than half of whom have never been to the Lyceum before.
“And then finally, there’s our civic function, to act as a gathering-place for the city, and reflect on what matters to people in Edinburgh right now. Great new productions of classics can be part of that, as can debates and conversations and great comedy and vital new work; there’s no brand new play in this 26-27 season, but there are plenty in the pipeline for the future. So there’s plenty to do, to make sure that the Lyceum can carry on making great professional theatre, here in Edinburgh; and I’m delighted to be here, getting on with the job.”
For full details of the 2026-27 Lyceum season see https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on
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