REVIEW: I'll Be Seeing You (Pitlochry Festival Theatre)

I’ll Be Seeing You – ★★★★★ – Dazzling

Pitlochry Festival Theatre 
22 Sept – 11 Oct
Review by Rebecca Mahar
 
What if Liberace walked into a play about Liberace? asks Martin Sherman’s new play I’ll Be Seeing You. Full of grit, glamour, and unexpected existentialism, the answer can be found at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, where Fra Fee, Simon Russell Beale, and Sherman himself confront the legacy of Mr. Showmanship.

Simon Russell Beale as Liberace and Fra Fee as the Writer. Pic: Tiu Makkonen.

The Writer (Fee) begins the play with a tirade about Liberace, how he hates him and the dishonest way he lived, publicly denying his homosexuality— and yet now he, the Writer, has been commissioned to write a play about Liberace (“by an obscure little theatre in the Scottish Highlands… you wouldn’t have heard of it”), so what’s he to do? Approach his subject from the dishonesty angle, of course, concentrating on the trial in which Liberace sued the Daily Mirror for implying he was homosexual in an era when it was criminal. Before the Writer can make any progress, however, Liberace (Beale) himself materialises in full flying, sequined, bedazzled, winged-cape glory, to tell his side of the story.
 
It's a gloriously meta, unapologetically camp, queerly (pun intended) introspective look at both the larger-than-life Liberace and the Writer’s response to him, grappling with what it really means to live an honest life. Liberace is accompanied by two sidekicks, Hunk (Adam Kashmiry) and Hunk/Chauffer (Ali Watt), who serve as Liberace’s assistants in the show’s many production numbers, and insert themselves into the Writer’s ruminations with commentary on how he’s full of shit. Watt’s character, inspired by Liberace’s live-in lover and chauffeur Scott Thorson, at one point literally emerges from the closet to give the Writer a hefty dose of reality. Also complicating the narrative is Mother (Anne Lacey), a far less obvious character than she may first appear, and catalyst for the question of who all this agonising over honesty is really about.

Simon Russell Beal as Liberace, Fra Fee as the Writer, Adam Kashmiry as Hunk. Pic: Tiu Hakkonen.

Tim Hatley’s clever, uninhibited design transforms the realism of the Writer’s flat into the repeated fever-dreams of Liberace’s world, working in perfect partnership with Grant Anderson’s evocative lighting. Within this alternately sparkling and ordinary world, co-directors Alan Cumming and Ben Occhipinti have crafted a rendition of Sherman’s sharp script which demands the audience recognise their part in all of this, reflecting the onstage interaction between Liberace and the Writer in which the latter must come to terms with how he is influence, willingly or not, by the former.
 
Fee delivers a stellar performance, fully subsumed in the character of the brash young Writer who’s never really stopped to critically reflect on himself— until he’s forced to do so, and unwanted vulnerability seeps through the cracks. Beale’s Liberace, meanwhile, has had his whole life and afterlife to reflect, and amidst the glamour Beale brings the weight of that reflection: lessons from a queer elder on the friction between honesty and truth. Fee and Beale carry the lion’s share of the play’s lines, but Kashmiry, Watt, Lacey, and Sherman all have vital roles to play. All bring specificity and spark to their roles, and though Sherman is a little quiet, he makes his professional acting debut here at eighty-seven with aplomb.

Ali Watt as Hunk/Chauffeur, Simon Russell Beale as Liberace, Adam Kashmiry as Hunk. Pic: Tiu Hakkonen.

Not all the play’s questions are answered, but sometimes asking them is the point— and recognising that while some questions can be answered by plumbing the depths of one’s own soul, some answers are lost to time, or the lack of it. I’ll Be Seeing You is full of surprises, roaring laughter, and more than a few piercing pauses to wonder at.
 
Running time: One hour and twenty minutes with no interval
Venue: Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Port-Na-Craig, Pitlochry PH16 5DR
22 September – 11 October 2026
Time: 7:30pm Wed-Sat; 2:00pm Wed/Thurs/Sat/Sun
Access performances: Audio Described 8 Oct (2pm) & 10 Oct (7:30pm); BSL Interpreted 9 Oct (7:30pm); Relaxed & Dementia Friendly 7 Oct (2pm)
Tickets: https://www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com/whats-on/ill-be-seeing-you/