The Emperor's New Kilt @ The Theatre Royal

Hans Christian Anderson’s classic fairytale gets the Scottish treatment as Wee Stories Company cleverly transpose The Emperor’s New Clothes to the fictitious Isle of Kiltie. The ridiculous Laird of the Isle who owns “all the trees and the hills and even the grass” is in a flummox deciding what to demand for his special birthday surprise. Worse still the man whose wardrobe is replete with a kilt for every day of the year petulantly announces, “I’ve got nothing to wear!” Enter the scheming Mr Harris and Mr Tweed, producers and purveyors of a cloth so special only clever people can see it. They set about to expose the vain and pompous laird in his birthday suit as the play in turn exposes the oppression of inherited privilege, tenancy and greed.

Not that the target audience were struck by the inadequacies of materialism and the capitalist, semi-feudal system in place on Kiltie. To the kids of the Kings Theatre audience The Emperor’s New Kilt was nothing more than a romp complete with singing sporrans, a Big Jessie and a stag with an identity crisis. And while there was surely something rather wrong and unsettling about an auditorium of kids encouraging a “true Scotsman” to strip down to his hand-crafted polar bear fur sporran, much of the other double entendres and dirty jokes were thankfully the strict reserve of the mums and dads.

An outrageously camp Iain Johnstone lorded it up in the titular role demanding a kilt worthy of a King or Queen while co-writer Andy Cannon entertained as Ramsay the ill-fated sheep destined for the Laird’s birthday haggis. An imaginative woven set, fast-paced role changes and elements of the pantomime combined to spark a cacophony of hoots, chortles and big belly laughs from kids and grown-ups alike.