Maggie Herskowitz, Book & Lyrics writer for “The Roads to Loch Lomond”
The journey of The Roads to Loch Lomond began with two teenagers scribbling notes in rehearsal rooms at the Boston Conservatory of Music.
Sixteen years later, those sketches have grown into a sweeping new musical, one that carries the echoes of history, the weight of love, and the voices of a creative team who matured alongside their work.
For book and lyrics writer Maggie Herskowitz and Composer Neil Dougals Reilly, the evolution of this show deepened their understanding of what it means to tell stories that endure.
As The Roads to Loch Lomond returns to The Phoenix Theatre Company this October to launch the 2025/26 Season, we sat down with Herskowitz to talk about the journey behind the show.
Q: What has it been like to watch The Roads to Loch Lomond grow from those early drafts to a piece that now travels the country and reaches audiences nationwide?
A: When Neil and I started writing this show, we were teenagers at the Boston Conservatory of Music. We’re now 35! So the story of the growth of the show has also been the story of two kids from different backgrounds growing into adults, both together and separately. A 19-year-old’s view of the world, of characters and theme, is very different than a 30-year-old’s. The way the two of us saw the world in 2009 is very different from how we see the world in 2016, in 2020, in 2025. I think the evolution of both ourselves as people and the evolution of the world around us has greatly informed the journey of this show.
Q: The show began its journey at our Festival of New American Theatre and is now launching our 2025/26 Season. How has the support of festivals and communities like ours shaped the life of this piece?
A: Our first workshop of the show was in New York in 2015, a nigh-unfathomable ten years ago. After a delay due to COVID, we were lucky enough to have a run in Portland in 2021. But The Phoenix Theater Company’s Festival of New American Theater was the first time we took the plunge into a longer two-act version of the musical.
There was something I found particularly intimidating about the idea of “daring” to put on a two-act musical, something that suddenly made it feel like an even bigger statement of “okay, I’m a musical theater writer, and this is a musical we wrote, and we’re going to trust that it’s good enough that people will come back after intermission.” I don’t think I would’ve been comfortable making that leap in the context of a full performance without trying it out, but nor would I ever have been able to know how an audience would respond to an intermission on the page alone. I was excited and nervous to see what people would make of this longer version, with this break in between.
To start with, you can already just feel what’s working and what’s not in a performance or presentation based on the audience’s reactions, in their audible responses and in body language. There’s a “vibe” you can feel in the room, and ONLY in the room. Not only did the vibe of the two act seem good, but at the talkbacks EXPERTLY led by the incredible Michelle Chin, multiple audience members mentioned being glad they had an intermission to take in everything the show had thrown at them emotionally – without even being prompted to comment on that! That was so validating and allowed me to trust that we were on the right track, and to present this show to an audience the way you’re going to see it now.
As someone who writes in a variety of forms (computer games, film/television, scientific articles) I find theater to be utterly unique in that it is the only space where you truly get to have that “dialogue” with the audience. It’s the type of art where you have the immediacy of an audience reaction, and if you’re very lucky, you get to use that audience reaction to inform the work you do. That’s the kind of thing that’s impossible for you to do alone in a room, and very tricky time-wise to do in the few previews you have before a show opens and is “frozen.” The real time for you to have that incredible theater dialogue between writers and audiences is in workshops and festivals like the Festival of New American Theater. It’s such an amazing opportunity, and I hope every theater writer gets to experience the time and freedom that processes like those allow.
Q: When people walk out of the theatre after experiencing The Roads to Loch Lomond, what’s the one conversation or emotion you most hope they carry with them?
“The Roads to Loch Lomond” is a story set against the backdrop of a war, but at the end of the day, I believe that it is a story about love. Love for country and love for culture, yes, but love for family and friends as well.
We’ve tried to balance the idea that there is great nobility in the Jacobite struggle without glorifying battle and violence as the ideal. It’s easy to get caught up in grand ideas of what it means to be “a hero” even now, without realizing that sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is live a life of love and kindness in whatever sphere of influence you have. Without spoiling anything, there’s a lyric toward the end of the show that I think sums this up: “there were lives that were changed/all because we lived there./Bread baked, and lambs born/because of our care.”
If people left the show reflecting on who they love most in their lives, how they can show that love, and how they can support their communities – even in seemingly small ways – I would be a very happy writer.
Event Details
What: The Roads to Loch Lomond
When: October 8 – November 2, 2025
Where: The Phoenix Theatre Company, Hormel Theatre, 1825 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85004
Tickets: Available at www.phoenixtheatre.com or by calling the Box Office at (602) 254-2151
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