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.
Quadrophenia Ballet for Festival Theatre
Townsend and The Who’s album gets ballet treatment
The Who’s 1973 rock opera Quadrophenia is to be re-imagined by Sadler’s Wells as a dance production: Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet, which will get its Scottish premiere at the Festival Theatre in June 2025.
Bonnie & Clyde musical gunned down
Tour pulled because of poor ticket sales
The UK tour of Bonnie and Clyde the musical, which had been due to play the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in July, has been shut down with immediate effect and will no longer play Edinburgh.
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.
Graham Simpson, unsung hero
Festival Theatre usher surprised at Night of Musicals
Graham Simpson, who has been an usher at the Festival Theatre for 30 years, was the surprise winner of the Unsung Hero Award at The National Lottery’s Big Night of Musicals 2024.
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.
