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The Burns Project

 
Mark Harding Review by Mark Harding 3 Published: 5 Jul 2026 Royal Lyceum Theatre Show Dates: 24 Jun 2026-4 Jul 2026

The Burns Project is a one-man show, written and performed by James Clements as Burns, interspersed with Burns’s songs (at the performance I attended, sung beautifully by Ray Aggs). The audience sits around a table set for dinner, but painted completely white, like a ghostly piece of modern art.

Clements deftly calibrates the audience’s sympathies

The play is constructed from Burns’s poetry, letters and journals, alongside recorded voices reading the words of his contemporaries and offering modern-day perspectives. Clements charts Burns’s life – his authoritarian father, his conflict with the church, his labour as a farmer, his loves and his poetic career – without shying away from his contradictions. Famous for championing equality, Burns was only prevented from working on Jamaican slave plantations because his literary career took off. Famous for his belief in human dignity and his tender love poetry, he had numerous extramarital affairs, fathering children with servants and barmaids who were unable to cope as unmarried mothers. An anti-monarchist, he worked as a tax collector.

Clements deftly calibrates the audience’s sympathies, showing Burns as a justly rebellious youth, heartbroken lover, satirist, roguish pick-up artist, regretful drunkard and grieving father. The only moment he departs from Burns’s own words is the finale’s sad roll call of his children and their mothers, most of whom died as babies or infants.

Despite Clements’s charisma, Cora Bissett’s imaginative direction, and Jenny Booth’s witty set and stage effects, the constraints of the monologue’s design become apparent. Limiting the piece to Burns’s own words removes the scope for Clements to play different characters, and covering a whole life sacrifices suspense and conflict – it becomes one thing after another. Burns is not placed in the wider context of his era – his parallels with Byron, for instance – and the contemporary voices omit perspectives that might make him more comprehensible to a modern audience, such as the speculation that he may have had bipolar disorder.

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The Blurb:

Take a seat at the Bard’s table for an intimate, unique theatrical experience exploring the complicated life and legacy of Robert Burns. Placing the audience in seats around an “immaculately designed” dinner table, the play draws spectators into close proximity with Burns himself, as the set comes alive around them with hidden voices, music and secrets – titillating, shameful and surprising in equal measure. Sitting around the table in the Henry Irving Room, let the story unfold - as you become part of history.

With unprecedented access to Robert Burns’ private letters, this striking production explores the man behind the legend in all his brilliance and contradiction. Created by writer/performer James Clements (“magnetic” (The Scotsman), “embodied” (The Guardian), ”[Burns has] never felt more alive” (The QR Reivew)), this immersive play blends letters, poetry and live music to bring Burns vividly to life, inviting audiences to encounter him unfiltered – a contradictory icon laid bare.

Co-created with the National Trust for Scotland and directed by Olivier award-winning director Cora Bissett (June Carter: The Woman, Her Music, and Me / What Girls Are Made Of), the production has enjoyed a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe, two national tours and a US tour in March 2026 - and is returning home to Edinburgh for this strictly limited engagement.