Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson will lead the US premiere of A History of Paper, the Scottish chamber musical that sold out its run with them in Scotland, for 13 weeks at Stage 42 from February 12, 2027. It will be Henderson’s New York stage debut.
The two-hander arrives from Scotland as a co-production of Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Dundee Rep Theatre, and it is the first show from either company to play Off-Broadway. Performances begin on Friday, February 12, 2027 at the Shubert Organization’s Stage 42, 422 West 42nd Street, for a limited run through Sunday, May 16. Sonia Friedman Productions, Jerry Goehring and Pemberley Productions are producing.
The piece has taken the long road. The late Oliver Emanuel first wrote it as a BBC Radio 4 play in 2017. He and composer Gareth Williams then reworked it as a musical, showing a work-in-progress version at Dundee Rep in 2019 as part of Rep Stripped, the theater’s festival for new Scottish writing. It reached the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Traverse Theatre in 2024 and took a Fringe First. Cumming saw it and, with director Andrew Panton, built it into his first season as artistic director at Pitlochry.
Its subject is a single relationship, traced through the paper a couple gathers over a lifetime: letters and postcards, menus, train tickets, shopping lists. Emanuel wrote the book, Williams the music, and the two share the lyrics.
“This is one of these rare shows that transcends its own story,” Cumming said, adding that it “utterly belongs in New York City.” He framed the run as the first step in a planned exchange between Manhattan and Pitlochry, and pointed out that he and Henderson first worked together more than forty years ago. Henderson said simply: “I never imagined it was possible to have the opportunity to step onto the New York stage.”
Cumming won his Tony as the Emcee in Roundabout’s Cabaret in 1998 and returned to the role in 2014. His other New York stage work includes Design for Living, The Threepenny Opera, a solo Macbeth and Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy” Off-Broadway, and in London he won an Olivier for Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Henderson took the Olivier for Best Actress in a Musical as Elizabeth in Girl from the North Country, a role she created at the Old Vic. On screen she is Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter films and Jude in the Bridget Jones films.
Panton, Dundee Rep’s artistic director, won Best Director at the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland for this staging. Design is by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita, lighting by Bruno Poet and sound by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite. Gavin Whitworth is musical supervisor and music director, and plays the piano.
Tickets go on sale on November 17 through Telecharge. For more information, visit the official website.
