Lyceum at Home on Stage
★★★★☆ Inviting
Lyceum: Thu 18 – Sat 20 Jun 2026
Review by Hugh Simpson
The Lyceum’s At Home on Stage provides an affecting series of performances, losing a little when divorced from their original settings, but convincing nevertheless.
The ‘At Home’ project consisted of four half-hour monologues ‘rooted in the city’ that were commissioned to be played in homes across Edinburgh, with the intention being to cover all 17 of the city’s electoral wards. After 36 performances, with audiences ranging from 3 to 41, all four were then performed in the theatre.
Ryan Hunter in Dylan’s Big Day and Graham Mackay-Bruce in Love Letter to a City. Pic: Stuart Armitt.
It has to be pointed out that, since the four pieces were intended to be seen individually in people’s houses, one after another on a stage (after Jack Willison’s elegant film showing some of the ‘at home’ experience) is not the ideal way to experience them.
So it is a testament to the overall quality of the plays that they work as well as they do like this. The Lyceum stage is set up like a living room, with some audience members sitting on sofas, but that the individual performances are so intimate and compelling is due less to this than to the quality of the acting and directing.
Dylan’s Big Day by Stephen Greenhorn is tied most closely to the intended setting, being a portrait of a young man who turns up at a stranger’s house. Dylan needs to get to the hospital, but first he needs a phone charger; his day has gone from bad to worse, what with an assault, a job interview and his partner in labour.
Ryan Hunter’s performance is thoroughly engaging and immediate, Greenhorn’s script is wonderfully structured, involving and humorous, and Eve Nicol’s direction is warm and paced to perfection. Despite the housebound setting, this is the piece that can most readily be imagined having a life outside this project.
persuasive performance
The Sights by Isla Cowan features another persuasive performance. Katrina Allen is a burnt-out guide on a ‘magical Edinburgh’ walking tour. Dealing with the conflict between the reality of Edinburgh and the image tourists have of it, this is a heartfelt and even-handed piece, directed with commendable flow by Shilpa T-Hyland.
While the first two pieces present cogent and complex evocations of Edinburgh and their characters, and really evoke a sense of place, the two monologues after the interval are somewhat different.
Katrina Allen in The Sights and Natali McCleary in Loved Too Hard. Pic: Stuart Armitt.
While Loved Too Hard by Apphia Campbell is set in Edinburgh, the location is really of secondary importance. Natali McCleary is excellent as McKenna, a young American woman who is house-sitting for a couple whose online ‘brand’ seems to consist of going abroad a lot.
Directed with verve by Zinnie Harris (also the creative lead for the whole project), this is a piece whose thought-provoking nature does meander a little once the set-up has been established.
McKenna cries out to be the central character in a longer play with other characters to bounce off. As it stands, it is also the segment that would obviously gain the most by being presented in a private house.
conventional
Alexander McCall Smith’s Love Letter to a City is the most conventional of the four monologues, lacking the ambiguities and subtleties of the others. Graham Mackay-Bruce plays a man looking back to his time as an art student in the 90s, although the portrait of Edinburgh he paints does seem to belong to some years earlier.
While undoubtedly heartfelt, it relies too heavily on timeworn images of Edinburgh, and makes more than one ill-advised sortie into ‘poetry’. Mackay-Bruce’s performance and the direction of Ben Harrison are never less than committed, but this has far less impact than the other pieces.
A couple of the monologues do go over the 30-minute prescribed length by some distance, which does make the whole experience rather longer than would be ideal. However, the diversity and quality of the individual monologues, added to the ambition and intention behind it all, makes this a thoroughly worthwhile exercise.
Running time: Three hours including one interval
Lyceum Theatre, Grindlay St, EH3 9AX
Thursday 18 – Saturday 20 June2026
Daily at 7.30 pm
Details: Book here.
ENDS
