Pitlochry Theatre Announces Musical About Working 9 to 5; Highland Perthshire Farmers Ask What Happens Between 5 and 9
Agricultural community 'deeply moved' by fantastical depiction of people who get to go home.
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, where some people apparently stop work at five. Photo: John MacKenzie, “Pitlochry Festival Theatre”, via Wikimedia Commons (geograph.org.uk), CC BY-SA 2.0
PITLOCHRY — Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s announcement that it will stage the musical 9 to 5 next May has been greeted with confusion across Highland Perthshire, where farmers, hoteliers and B&B owners say they have never encountered a working day with “both a start and an end.”
“I read the title and I thought it was a typo,” said Strathtay sheep farmer Ewan McLaren, 61. “Nine to five what? Nine to five in the morning? Lambing doesn’t stop at five. The ewes don’t know what five is. I didn’t know what five was until my granddaughter showed me on a phone.”
The theatre insists the show, which follows three office workers taking revenge on a terrible boss, is “pure fiction”, a reassurance which many in the local hospitality trade said they found “very comforting”.
“A boss who sits in an office? Imagine,” said one Kenmore hotel worker, who asked not to be named as she was technically on her fourteenth hour. “Our boss is also the chef, the barman, the man who unblocks the drains and the bagpiper at weddings. If we tried to tie him up and take over, he’d just ask us to also do the breakfasts.”
Theatre bosses have responded by offering a special “Rural Matinee”, starting at 4.45am so farmers can watch before milking, and a “Seasonal Workers’ Performance” running continuously from April to October with no interval.
The 2027 season also includes a new play about the painter Jack Vettriano and a sold-out stage version of Supernova, prompting a theatre spokesperson to warn that tickets for 9 to 5 were “going fast — certainly faster than anyone on the A9.”
Asked whether the show might inspire a wave of workplace revolution in Highland Perthshire, McLaren was doubtful. “Three women take over a company and run it better than the man in charge?” he said. “Aye, well. That’s every farm in Scotland. We just don’t sing about it.”
The real story: Pitlochry Festival Theatre announces 9 to 5: The Musical (1–29 May 2027) in its 2027 season (PFT / WhatsOnStage, 15 Oct 2026)
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