OH DEARIE ME! - The High Life – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Oh dearie me, indeed. If Air Scotia's motto is that the sky is the limit, then The High Life at the Edinburgh Playhouse clears that bar with room to spare, turbulence and all. What could have been a nostalgia exercise coasting on autopilot instead turns out to be a genuinely riotous return to the air. Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson slot back into Sebastian Flight and Steve McCracken as though no time has passed, and the chemistry between them, honed over decades, remains the beating heart of the show.

While I was expecting Mason to turn in a strong musical contribution I was struck by how great Cumming's voice still is too, and for a moment I was transported back to his groundbreaking performance in Sam Mendes' production of Cabaret, although that was a very different kind of musical!

The wider cast holds its own admirably. Siobhan Redmond is as fabulous as always as Shona Spurtle, and Patrick Ryecart's return as Captain Hilary Duff was a particular pleasure - his increasingly surreal interjections being one of the highlights of the evening.

Occasionally leaning too hard on shoehorned political point scoring, and nationalistic themes for my taste, the second half tips into such gloriously over the top silliness that any irritation fades fast. Something about getting lost in the 'Lower Largo' triangle, everyone being ginger, IRN BRU and Margaret Thatcher's spit? I got a little lost, along with the plane and the plot, but it hardly matters when the show is having that much fun with itself.

A riotous, warm, funny, occasionally uneven celebration of a cult favourite, and Scottishness itself. Thirty years on, Air Scotia is still very much worth boarding.