The High Life: The Musical, Still Living It! review – the Alan Cumming creation flies into deliriously silly panto territory

Dundee Rep
Cumming and Forbes Masson revive their cult 1994 TV sitcom with brilliant songs and a Beano-esque plot as budget Air Scotia is threatened with takeover

If someone tells you this musical spin-off from the cult 1994 TV sitcom is like a pantomime, they won’t just mean the jokes. Having been written by Johnny McKnight and the series creators, Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson, it is, of course, top-loaded with gags. They tumble out in a cross-cultural collage, referencing everyone from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to Sheena Easton (yes, some more topical than others), in a deliriously silly festival of wisecracks. The one about asthma alone is worth the ticket price.

But the panto roots go deeper than that. It is in the direct address, the community singalong, the underwater neon-tube dance and the two-dimensional approximation of a Brigadoon hotel, complete with tartan wallpaper, exuberantly designed by Colin Richmond. There is a man-size dog and two costume changes at the curtain call. Oh, yes there is.