Festival Theatre
Life of Pi
★★★★☆ Visually spectacular
Considerable theatrical magic can be found in the touring production of Life of Pi at the Festival Theatre. If the staging sometimes overwhelms the storytelling, it is still a production of real impact.
The Music Man
★★★★☆ Massive
Huge production numbers and constant energy dominate Southern Light’s The Music Man at the Festival Theatre. Undeniably frothy and not a little silly, it has a scale and magnetism that draw the audience in.
The Gondoliers
★★★★☆ Sparkling
The Edinburgh Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of The Gondoliers has a vitality and melodicism that always catches the eye and ear.
Hamilton
★★★★★ The storm’s eye
Event theatre has arrived in Edinburgh with the major production of Hamilton at the Festival Theatre, where it will sit down for nearly nine weeks in a run that was all-but sold out before it even opened.
The Pantomime Adventures of Peter Pan
★★★★☆ Highflying
The Pantomime Adventures of Peter Pan turns out to be about 98% pantomime and 2% Peter Pan, but is tremendous fun nevertheless.
Edinburgh Gang Show 2023
★★★★☆ Riding high
Boasting a cast of (nearly) thousands and as much entertainment as you could wish for, the Edinburgh Gang Show 2023 hits the odd wrong note but in the end its sheer momentum brooks no argument.
Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning
★★★★☆ Angry
You can’t keep a good vampire down for long, and the story of Dracula keeps coming back to the stage, with its depictions of transgressive behaviour making it a constant candidate for reinvention.
Sister Act
★★★★★ Joyful
For an evening of laugh out loud entertainment which will send you home singing, look no further than the UK tour of Sister Act, playing all week at the Festival Theatre.
2:22 A Ghost Story
★★★☆☆ Spooky
On tour after an award-winning (and still-current) London run, Danny Robins’s 2:22 A Ghost Story at the Festival Theatre is an entertaining horror story. It largely justifies the confidence displayed in putting the word ‘ghost’ right up there in the title.
Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet
★★★★☆ Radical and inventive
Matthew Bourne’s radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for his New Adventures company, creates a ballet about the powerless and the powerful which highlights the madness of young love and the crazy things it forces us to do.
