Pitlochry Festival Theatre - Ensemble assemble.

The Scotsman 30 May 2024

The music of Carole King has a special place in Kirsty Findlay’s heart. In 1988, her mother, June McCreadie, appeared on the TV talent show New Faces singing one of King’s hits. “The first time I ever heard a Carole King song was when my mum sang Beautiful,” she says. “It was the Barbra Streisand version, but it wasn’t that much different!”

Findlay grew up in a musical household (her dad and uncle were in her mum’s band) and was aware of the singer-songwriter in the same vague way many of us are. Not everyone knows the name of Carole King, but few can have escaped her many hit songs. In the UK, more than 60 of them reached the charts, among them It’s Too Late, I Feel The Earth Move and Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

But Findlay’s real entry point came from an unexpected source. “As a teenager, my way in was Gilmore Girls,” she recalls. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).