The Great Lowland Touring Company is a group of students from Edinburgh. This summer they revived the long-standing tradition of the Highland Tour, visiting remote Scottish villages with a play - an obscure medieval farce called Gammer Gurton's Needle.
As the film follows their increasingly battered blue bus from village to village, their concern slowly shifts from the problems of local reaction to the more difficult ones inside the group. As they go for days on little sleep or food, it's hardly surprising that for every burst of excitement they experience a corresponding low. Inevitably they are left wondering who benefits from the tour, themselves or the audience.