Brigadoon

Regent’s Park and mist go together like tartan and a ceilidh, so Drew McOnie choosing Brigadoon for his first season-closer as Artistic Director feels less like programming and more like fate. McOnie—doubling as director and choreographer—leans into the park’s natural romance while keeping a firm grip on momentum. The result is a revival that’s heady, handsome and, when it counts, surprisingly moving.

The classic Alan Jay Lerner (book/lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music) tale has been smartly refitted by Rona Munro, who swaps the original’s post-war Yanks-on-holiday setup for two WWII pilots who tumble into a Highland village that surfaces for a single day every hundred years. The tweak sounds cosmetic; it isn’t. War-weariness hangs in the air, sharpening the story’s questions about escape, duty and the cost of choosing enchantment over reality. It also gives McOnie license to lace the choreography with sinew and urgency: the reels still swirl, but the bodies driving them have baggage.

Visually, it’s a beauty. Basia Binkowska’s set is a multi-level thicket of suggestion making great use of the park's tree canopy. Tone, timber and heather coax the imagination rather than clobber it while Sami Fendall’s costumes (making beautiful use of green, cream, yellow and beige shades) slip nimbly between myth and modernity. At dusk, Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting turns the stage into a lantern-lit glen; when the moon hits the haze just so, you can almost hear the bracken breathe. Nick Lidster supplies a sound mix that keeps vocals clean against the open-air elements, and when the band swells under Laura Bangay’s musical direction, Sarah Travis’s orchestrations bloom with a woody warmth that flatters Loewe’s melodies without museum-polishing them.

Front and centre, Louis Gaunt makes for a dashing (if sometimes wooden) Tommy, a golden-voiced dreamer whose decency never curdles into corn. There's scant chemistry between himself and Danielle Fiamanya’s Fiona who, in her turn, is more than a romantic ideal: she’s flinty, funny, and grounded enough to make their leap of faith feel earned.

Around them, there’s classy support. Nic Myers delivers a scene-stealing Meg Brockie, all quicksilver quips and winked-asides without sacrificing heart. Gilli Jones gives Charlie Dalrymple the sort of clarion tenor that makes “Come to Me, Bend to Me” feel like a private vow whispered to the assembled throng. Cavan Clarke charts Jeff’s cynicism with bite, Danny Nattrass’s Harry injects real stakes into the village’s fragile spell, and Anne Lacey’s Lundie supplies a storyteller’s hush that stills the park. Rounding out the clan, Jasmine Jules Andrews (Jean), Edward Baruwa (Andrew) and Norman Bowman (Archie) anchor the community with charisma and credible grit.

McOnie’s dances are the show’s bloodstream. He threads Highland steps through contemporary phrasing so the community moves as one organism—rooted yet restless. A wedding sequence whips from courtship to catastrophe with frightening speed, and a bagpiper’s silhouetted walk across the stage (credit to David Colvin) is the kind of goosebump theatre that Regent’s Park exists to deliver.

Accents were patchy but, in a country where British accents are de rigeur for all Shakespearean plays regardless of where they are set or the nationality of the characters, should this matter? If Romeo is fine with an Essex accent and Macbeth can be a Brummie, maybe having accurate local accents in lesser dramas is asking a bit much.

Brigadoon runs at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre through 20 September 2025. (Key creatives and casting confirmed via the theatre and trade press.)