National Theatre of Scotland
The High Life hits the high notes
“U Fur Coffee?”
Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson’s The High Life is to get a musical makeover in 2026, after thirty years in the waiting lounge in a new production from the National Theatre of Scotland.
KELI
★★★★☆ Affecting
First seen in preview at the Lyceum, and having gone through several different incarnations, Martin Green’s play KELI is finally a full-length stage drama
The Fifth Step (EIF)
★★★☆☆ Diffuse
The National Theatre of Scotland’s The Fifth Step at the Lyceum as part of the International Festival is a keenly observed and notably well acted piece that nevertheless lacks sustained impact.
Dear Billy
★★★★☆ Devotional
Gary McNair presents a remount of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Dear Billy, A Love Letter to the Big Yin at the Assembly Rooms on George Street for a ten date run at the fringe.
June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me
★★★★☆ Exuberant
Intense emotion is combined with real intelligence in The National Theatre of Scotland and Grid Iron’s June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me by Charlene Boyd, at Summerhall Dissection Room.
Maggie & Me
★★★☆☆ Resonant but unwieldy
The National Theatre of Scotland’s Maggie & Me, touring to the Traverse, is an odd beast indeed. It has a great deal to say about both the personal and the political, but some of it is lost in an over-ambitious, wildly inconsistent production.
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.
Thrown (EIF)
★★★★☆ Substantial
The National Theatre of Scotland’s Thrown, at the Traverse as part of the International Festival, is an intelligent and powerful piece of theatre.
Protest
★★★☆☆ Girl power
Hannah Lavery’s Protest at the Studio as part of the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival proves that, to bring change, all you need is a voice and a little imagination.
Kidnapped
★★★★★ Rattling adventure
Isobel McArthur has excelled herself in her latest adaptation of a classic story to the stage, this time giving Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped a music-filled, comic and heartfelt makeover.
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