Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape on show in Edinburgh next month

Playwright Peter Arnott’s Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape is coming to Edinburgh next month.

The play is set in a Perthshire country house during the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014.  

It revolves around retired academic and political heavyweight, George Rennie – played by John Michie – and his fractured family and former students, coming together for a dramatic reckoning.  

Having premiered at Pitlochry Festival Theatre this August, it will now show at Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh from 4-14 October. 

‘Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape has been, for me, both a welcome return to Pitlochry, and the chance to do a big new play about who we are, where we’ve just been, and where we might go now,’ Peter said.

‘The play is about the complex history behind every family snapshot. In this instance, an ultra-liberal well-educated and well-fed Scottish family with a summer house in Perthshire, living the perfect life in the perfect place at the perfect time.

‘The truth is that I’ve been thinking about these people for so long…since the end of the 1980s, in fact, that their lives and mine (and ours, I hope) are all so intertwined by now that I can’t tell where reality stops, and fiction begins. 

‘They are very real to me, and, with an outstanding ensemble of actors, I am thrilled that their reality will soon be taking on three dimensions in front of an audience.’

Read more on Scottish Field’s News pages. 

Plus, don’t miss the October issue of Scottish Field magazine.