On Stage Next Week

Listings for the week: Monday 29 April – Sunday 5 May 2024:

For the following week’s listings, look here: On Stage the Following Week.
The current week’s listings are here: On Stage This Week.

Click on the name of the show or the Book here link to go to its ticketing site.

The Banshee Labyrinth
29-35 Niddry St, Edinburgh EH1 1LG, UK
The Ebony Frame (Erstwhile Media)
Sat 4 May 2024.
Early evening: 5.30pm.
Rehearsed reading of a new adaptation of an Edith Nesbit ghost story by Oliver Giggins to mark the centenary of the author’s death. When Arthur Marsh inherits his aunt’s house, he expects nothing more than a long-desired financial stability. But the ancient ebony frame on an otherwise unremarkable picture exerts a strange attraction on the young man… Book here.

The Brunton @ Loretto School 
Loretto School Theatre, Millhill, Musselburgh. Phone booking: 0131 665 2240
MAMA Spotlight Awards (MAMA)
Fri 3- Sat 4 May 2024.
Evenings: 7.30pm; Sat mat: 2pm.
Musselburgh Amateur Musical Association’s annual revue brings a fun filled evening of iconic Musicals and Artists through the years. This season, the revue also gives the audience a chance to choose one of the numbers MAMA will perform in their People’s Choice Award. Book here.

Festival Theatre
13/29 Nicolson Street EH8 9FT. Phone booking: 0131 529 6000.
Scottish Ballet: Swan Lake
Thurs 2 – Sat 4 May 2024
Evenings: 7.30pm; Matinee Sat: 2.30pm.
Arching backs, spiralling arms, and mesmerising patterns push the company dancers to their physical limits in this tale of purity versus seduction. David Dawson’s daring, visceral choreography is perfectly paired with the rich, romantic Tchaikovsky score, played live by the Scottish Ballet Orchestra. Book here.

Lyceum Theatre
Grindlay Street EH3 9AX. Phone booking: 0131 248 4848.

The Girls of Slender Means
By Gabriel Quigley, adapted from the novel by Muriel Spark
Sat 13 April – Sat 4 May 2024
Tue – Sat: 7.30pm; Mats Weds & Sat: 2.30pm.
Æ review: ★★★☆☆ Poignant.
Set in the summer of 1945, in a hostel for the ‘Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London.’, The Girls of Slender Means follows the adventures of the women who live there. They do their best to act as if the war never happened. But behind the girls’ giddy literary and amorous explorations hides an exquisite fragility and sinister peril, as they strive to survive ‘when all the nice people were poor’. Book here.

Online
On a screen in your own home
The Shadow of the Dark (Erstwhile Media)
Sat 4 May 2024.
All day: 0.01am to 11.59pm.
Æ review: ★★★☆☆ Spooky
Erstwhile mark the centenary of E Nesbit’s death with a recording made at Edinburgh HorrorFest 2023. Real-life terrors from Nesbit’s life are mixed in with The Shadow, a ghost story of lost love and longing, and In the Dark, a terrifying paranoid confession of a (accidental?) murderer, in this portmanteau show. Book here.

Playhouse
18 – 22 Greenside Place, EH1 3AA. Phone booking: 0844 871 3014.
The Drifters Girl
Tue 30 April – Sat 4 May 2024
Tue – Sat: 7.30pm; Mats Wed, Sat: 2.30pm
Jukebox musical tells the story of the Drifters and the truth about the woman who made them. From the highs of hit records to the lows of legal battles and personal tragedy, Faye Treadwell is the legendary manager of The Drifters who refused to give up on the group she loved. Book here .

Pleasance Theatre
60 Pleasance, EH8 9TJ.

 All Shook Up (QMU)
Thurs 2 – Sat 4 May 2024.
Evenings: 7.30pm; Sat mat: 12.30pm.
Queen Margaret University’s Musical Theatre Society with the jukebox musical set in 1955 featuring the songs of Elvis Presley, with a book by Joe DiPietro about a guitar-playing roustabout who rides into a square little town and, well, shakes things up. Book here.

Traverse
10 Cambridge Street, EH1 2ED. Phone booking: 0131 228 1404.
Louder: A project for New Writers (Framework TC)
Fri 3 May 2024
Evening: 7.30pm (Trav 1).
A night of new writing from emerging theatre-makers of marginalised genders. Four short plays inspired by the theme Louder: The Peri Effect by Caroline Mentiplay; The Rats’ Whisper by Jinling Wu; bright as a dropped coin by King Hoberon and Louder Than Words by Fiona Moon. Directed by Coco Schogler, Sarah Marie Mooney, Heath Virgoe and Emma Lynne Harley. Book here.

*NB: This is intended to be a complete listing of all public theatrical productions on in Edinburgh. If you are staging a show which is not listed, or a listing is inaccurate, please get in touch through the contact page, here.