The Scotsman Sessions #436: Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson with Gavin Whitworth (piano)

When the towers fell, they took with them many of our hopes for a better world, in the new millennium that had just begun. And it’s the long echo of that impact down through our civilisation, and through countless thousands of lives, that was the inspiration for the late, award-winning playwright Oliver Emanuel’s A History of Paper, first a 2016 BBC radio play, and then a stage musical with exquisite songs, co-created with Emanuel’s composer friend Gareth Williams, which opened at the Traverse in 2024, just a few month’s after Emanuel’s tragic death from brain cancer at only 43.

A History of Paper is the very opposite of a political play, though. Instead, it focusses tightly on the simple love-story of one young couple from Scotland, whose fate brings them to New York on that day. When Pitlochry’s artistic director Alan Cumming saw the play at the Traverse Theatre in 2024, he was stunned by the sheer force of emotion it unleashed; and the result is the new staging of the show set to open at Pitlochry Festival Theatre next month, featuring Cumming himself, and his fellow Scottish star Shirley Henderson, a friend and contemporary whose career has encompassed stage, television, and films ranging from Mike Leigh’s brilliant Topsy-Turvey to Bridget Jones and Harry Potter.

“I don’t think I can ever remember being that moved by a stage performance,” says Cumming, in a break from rehearsals at Pitlochry. “It touched me in a really deep way, and it seemed to move the whole audience, too. It’s a story that’s so simple and delicate, interwoven with this history of paper and the way it has marked out our lives; and yet it packs a huge emotional punch.

“So as someone who was in New York that day in 2001, I just felt immediately that I wanted to do this play, and to do it as an older person, who was young then - maybe early 30s - but is now looking back over decades. So we’ve made it into a memory play, in a way that it wasn’t, when it was performed by brilliant young actors; and yet we haven’t had to change it at all, because everything in the play - the dialogue, the story, the songs - still fits perfectly.”

“I think what we’re doing,” says Henderson,” is trying to capture the joy in that relationship, which makes it such a haunting memory. And also to say something about that stage of life when we look back, and begin to wonder whether we need to hold on to all the things that we keep as reminders of the past; maybe the memory is enough.”

“What’s happening in the play,” adds Cumming, “is that he is trying to look through all these paper memories one last time, before he moves on and away, towards Scotland’s beautiful east coast - and all of that also has echoes for both me and Shirley, because we both grew up in the east of Scotland, near the sea.

“And as for Ollie Emanuel - well, I think it’s hard to say how much his loss meant to the team who created this show, and how Gareth’s love for his friend echoes through the music and the songs, which are absolutely beautiful. Bereavement and loss, and how we cope with it, were huge themes for Ollie in his writing life; and it certainly feels as though he’s still very present, in the rehearsal room, as we work together on this.”

And as he heads back, Alan Cumming pauses by his huge Pitlochry window. “Oh look,” he says, “there’s a salmon jumping in the river - a little flash of silver there”; almost as if that Olly Emanuel magic is brushing past us, one more time.

A History of Paper is at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 9 August until 12 September; then at Dundee Rep from 16-19 September

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