one4review | On 14, Aug 2025

In When Billy Met Alasdair, Scottish author and playwright Alan Bissett imagines what might have happened in a conversation between two Scottish legends: Billy Connolly and Alasdair Gray. Bissett is aware there is admittedly not a lot to speculate on, the only evidence of them ever having met being a photograph from the book launch for Gray’s magnum opus Lanark.

The play’s structure consists of Bissett as each man recounting their life stories, the playwright effectively illustrating their contrasting personalities. Alasdair Gray is hunched and stilted, monologuing to the audience while Billy Connolly theatrically addresses celebrity friends at his 60th birthday party. Bissett appears as the play’s author to interrupt this structure at one point in order to further contextualise the play and explain his motivation in writing it; a method which works as a clear homage to Alasdair Gray’s propensity for inserting himself into his novels and intervening in the plot. While the beginning of the play does not suggest there is a lot of information to connect these men, Bissett finds the common threads of their histories to uncover quite an inspiring message of perseverance and beating the odds.

The show is a great love letter to two legendary Scottish artists – one which centres and celebrates their Glaswegian roots in a way both men would surely approve of. During the Edinburgh Fringe, it is wonderful to see a play which champions creativity in Scotland.

****

Reviewed by Niamh O’Hara

Netherbow Theatre at Scottish Storrytelling Centre

20.30 (1hr)

Until 23 Aug (not 21 or 21)