The Scotsman Sessions #435: Maureen Beattie
Welcome to the Scotsman Sessions, a series of short video performances from artists all around the country introduced by our critics. Here, ahead of her starring role in next month’s production of Lear at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Maureen Beattie performs the play’s famous ‘O, reason not the need’ soliloquy
If Scottish theatre had royalty - which it absolutely does not - then Maureen Beattie would certainly be, if not its queen, then one of its most senior working princesses.
The daughter of much-loved comedian and actor Johnny Beattie, and sister of former actress Louise Beattie (now a senior Scottish advocate and prosecutor), Maureen Beattie has carved herself a brilliant career in stage and television across the UK, playing major roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Royal Exchange in Manchester, and the National Theatre of Scotland. She has also won television fame in shows ranging from Casualty to Deadwater Fell; and she served as President of the actors’ union Equity through the challenging Covid years from 2018 to 2022, winning an OBE for her services to the entertainment industry.
So when Alan Cumming became artistic director at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, early last year, it’s hardly surprising that Maureen Beattie was one of the first actors he approached, to see whether she would like to work at Pitlochry in 2026.
“I first met Alan 40 years ago,” says Beattie, still astonishingly youthful in her early 70s. “It was when I was playing Lady Macbeth in Michael Boyd’s production at the Tron, and Michael took Alan out of his final year at RCS for a few weeks, to play the prince, Malcolm.
“So a passion for Shakespeare is something we’ve always shared; and when I told Alan that, as an older actress, I was now really interested in tackling some of Shakespeare’s great male heroes, and mentioned Lear as one of them, I could see immediately that he was interested. Lear is play about a once-powerful patriarch facing old age and the decline of his powers; and we could both see how interesting it would be to set the story in a matriarchy, where the play’s fierce family drama involves a once-mighty queen, and her relationship with her daughters.”
The result is Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s new production of Lear, set to open on 4 July, and starring Beattie alongside a nine-strong supporting cast that includes Forbes Masson as Gloucester, and a whole range of outstanding Scottish acting talent. In this Scotsman session, we see Lear’s first reaction to her two older daughters’ growing cruelty and indifference, after she steps down from the throne and divides her kingdom between them. It is a moving and astonishing speech, in which Lear rages, but recognises for the first time that she now lacks the power to punish, to control, or to defend herself. And although Beattie is not the first Scottish actress to play the troubled old monarch - in 2017 Janette Foggo played a memorable Queen Lear, at Bard In The Botanics in Glasgow - her appearance in the first full Shakespearean tragedy staged by a top Scottish producing theatre for more than a decade marks an exciting moment, for her and for theatre in Scotland.
“To be honest, it is just fabulous and thrilling, to be here in this beautiful place, working on this play with such a wonderful company,” says Beattie. “As a bonus, the show is being directed by Finn den Hertog, the brilliant director son of my great actress friend Ann Louise Ross; and he has made a superb version of the text, stripped of some detail, but absolutely complete in terms of the story and main characters.
“There are some very tough themes in this play, of course; the pain of parenthood, Lear’s growing confusion and dementia, the underlying story - of great concern to King James VI and I, as patron of Shakespeare’s company - of a mythical Britain divided, and sliding into war.
“But with Shakespeare, there’s always the terrific quality of the writing to help you through. For an actor, Shakespeare’s verse is like a fantastic surfboard, that you have to love and work with and trust; and if you let it, it will always carry you onward, to the end.”
Lear is at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 4 July until 1 August, see www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com
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