Theatre reviews: Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil | Sunset Boulevard - The Backstage Cut

Theatre and StageJames Brining’s fine production of Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil teaches important lessons about learning to experience defeat without abandoning hope, writes Joyce McMillanPublished 15th May 2026, 14:52 BSTBlack Diamonds and the Blue Brazil, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★★Sunset Boulevard - The Backstage Cut, Perth Theatre ★★★★Loss is the theme of the season, across Scottish theatre; and above all, the loss of the big, labour-hungry industries that once shaped our world. In Lynn Nottage’s mighty Sweat at the Citizens’ - soon at the Lyceum - and Frances Poet’s powerful new NTS/Tron touring play Stand and Deliver, we see working-class communities in Pennsylvania and Clydeside fighting that loss, and struggling to understand it.Rarely, though, has this familiar subject received a treatment so loving, and so full of humour and humanity, as in legendary journalist and churchman Ron Ferguson’s 1993 book Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil, about his beloved if often unsuccessful football team Cowdenbeath, ironically known as The Blue Brazil; and now the book appears on stage at the Lyceum, in a two-hour version by playwright Gary McNair featuring gorgeous songs composed and performed live by Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue .Ricky Ross in Black Diamonds and blue Brazil | Aly WightBlack Diamonds and the Blue Brazil is essentially a two-handed story, about the relationship between an old Fife miner and passionate Cowdenbeath fan and his ambitious daughter Sally, who has fled her hometown for life as a high-flying lawyer in London; and McNair’s version frames the story as a monologue for Sally, intercut with remembered conversations with her Dad, who has just passed away.In James Brining’s fine production, Dawn Steele and Barrie Hunter make a simply perfect pairing as Sally and Dad; she warmly and effortlessly drawing the audience into her wry account of events following her father’s funeral, he a walking encyclopaedia of working-class wit and wisdom, full of deep and often hilarious philosophical insights into the failures of his football team as a metaphor for life itself. And behind them, at his keyboard, sits Ricky Ross, one of the great chroniclers of post-industrial Scotland, rolling out 13 beautiful songs that come across less as separate numbers, and more as a loving and supportive continuo to the conversations between Sally and her dad.Towards the end, McNair’s version perhaps becomes slightly repetitive, in making its point; sometimes, silence and music say more. The message itself, though, is a vital one, about learning to experience defeat - in this case, a historic whole season without a home victory - without abandoning hope; and in what is perhaps the show’s theme song, Ricky Ross asks what is winning, and what is losing, when defeat sometimes brings - as it finally does for Sally - a far greater sense of love, solidarity. community and homecoming.Sunset Boulevard - The Backstage Cut | ContributedThe fading film star Norma Desmond, in Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece Sunset Boulevard, is perhaps cinema’s greatest example of a character who cannot cope with loss at all; and whose desperate attempts to cling to youth, and long-ago stardom, eventually destroy the life of the film’s narrator, young and struggling Hollywood scriptwriter Joe Gillis.First seen at Oran Mor in 2015, Sunset Boulevard - The Backstage Cut is one of Morag Fullarton’s fabulously clever and entertaining cut-down versions of classic films; and this week it plays at Perth in a 75-minute staging that magically reunites the show’s superb 2015 cast, which features Juliet Cadzow as Norma (and also as Gloria Swanson, who played her in the film) with John Kielty as Gillis, Frances Thorburn as his scriptwriting friend Betty Schaefer, and Mark McDonnell as Norma’s mysterious butler and factotum, Max.In a sense, this is as much John Kielty’s show as the fabulous Juliet Cadzow’s, as he leads us through the tormented tale of Joe’s seduction by Norma’s lethal combination of wealth and vulnerability. And together, they draw us into the story of one of the greatest of all movies; reminding us, as Sally’s dad would say, that if we want to survive loss with any grace, we first need the courage to face it, head on.Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil is at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until 23 May. Sunset Boulevard - The Backstage Cut is at Perth Theatre until 16 May.The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe todayWant the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here