Review: Breathtaking Roads | A Play, A Pie and A Pint, Glasgow

Lisa in the theatre
May 28
3 min read

Breathtaking Roads is the latest play of A Play, A Pie and A Pint's 2026 Spring season. It's on at Òran Mór, Glasgow until the 30th May and then it zooms over to the King’s Theatre, Kirkcaldy for the first week of June. Read my review below.

Breathtaking Roads ★★☆☆☆

Review: 26 May 2026 | Òran Mór, Glasgow

Set in rural Ulinish on the Isle of Skye, Breathtaking Roads is a new drama from debut A Play, A Pie and A Pint writer Ryan Hay. Co-presented with the brilliant intersectional feminist theatre company Stellar Quines, Breathtaking Roads is a coming-of-age play about friendship and fearlessness.

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Ruari (Ros Watt) is working the bar at a roadside inn in Ulinish on the remote, windswept, southwest coast of Skye. Two lesbian bikers - Helen (Liz Kettle) and Jane (Jill Riddiford) arrive, and the three are drawn into uneasy, late-night conversation over a few drinks. Ruari is in awe of the older bikers, who are effortlessly cool and assured.

Over the next three years, we return to the same inn on Skye with the bikers, and witness the three form a friendship as the older couple open Ruari's eyes to a world outside the gloomy bar.

Designer Gillian Argo has outdone herself this week with an authentic, old-fashioned, cosy Highland bar set that's dark but welcoming. I could've happily settled in for the night! It's the kind of place you want to relax over a whisky and talk the hours away... just as the bikers and Ruari do in this play.

But the pub and the play lack ambience. Some very low-level background music or chatter may have helped to warm the atmosphere in the pub.

Breathtaking Roads is a slow-paced, strange story. The well-written, atypical characters and their strained relationships are the focal point, but even at a brisk 50 minutes, the story felt stretched.

Scottish lesbian bikers with Harleys and exciting tales of days gone by

I was so looking forward to a new play featuring Scottish lesbian bikers, and the casting for Breathtaking Roads is impeccable. Liz Kettle's Helen and Jill Riddiford's Jane are iconic, leather-clad, Harley-riding trailblazers! Helen's stories of former glory days at the Glasgow Apollo with Joan Jett are a highlight.

Ros Watt's Ruari is a more complex character, starting off as Marie when we first meet her, she rebrands as Ruari by the time the bikers visit the pub for the second year.

Liz Kettle's stage presence is off the charts electrifying, but all three actors are excellent, and make their characters quietly intriguing.

There's definitely more going on than first expected in Breathtaking Roads, and I'm not sure that I fully understood Stellar Quines' Artistic Director, Caitlin Skinner's every intention.

There were tensions and mood swings between the trio of characters that seemed to come out of nowhere. And surprisingly, the elder lesbians did not seem that supportive of Ruari's gender transition. Ruari's dad - the pub landlord - was always AWOL when the bikers visited, leaving Ruari with all the work. And who was the shadowy figure who appeared in the dead of night? My imagination was running wild for a darker twist to the tale or a link between the two, but I left with more questions than answers.

There's so much potential for Breathtaking Roads, and there's definitely a poignant underlying message about finding your own identity and following your own path. But despite the promising set-up and captivating performances, the play felt a bit cheerless and left me with too many questions to be satisfied. ★★☆☆☆