Mary Baillie

Tanya Ronder’s adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding follows the tragic love triangle between the Bride (Saffron Rae), the Groom (Jude Bain) and Leonarda (Rosie Mackay). When the Bride makes her choice on her wedding night, blood is shed as passion and honour collide in a world ruled by tradition and gossip. Ronder’s version adds a refreshing queer twist to the story, giving new depth to Lorca’s themes of desire and repression.

Performed fittingly on Halloween, this stage version of Let the Right One In adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel and film captures the eerie chill of Blackeberg, Sweden. The story follows Oskar, a lonely and bullied boy who befriends a strange young girl named Eli. She smells like a wet dog, speaks like an old person, jumps unnaturally high, and refuses to eat sweets. Gradually it becomes clear (though never directly stated) that Eli harbours a dark secret. She is some sort of serial killer or vampire - possibly an ancient being trapped in a child’s body who manipulates young boys to help her survive. This is a play of simple language yet abundant subtext. It is not an easy one to stage, yet Finn de Hertog’s production is bloody impressive.

Black Hole Sign presents a compelling premise: an understaffed A&E department in disarray, where Senior Charge Nurse Crea (Helen Logan) struggles to steer a failing ship under the immense pressures facing the NHS. The play offers an interesting insight into the challenges of nursing and raises important questions about what it truly means to deliver effective care.

Red Like Fruit is a two-hander exploring questions around consent and the suppression of women’s voices in sexual abuse claims. The staging is minimal: Lauren (Michelle Montieth) sits on a chair on a raised platform, while Luke (David Patrick Flemming) stands at a lectern on a lower level beside her, reading her story aloud. For almost the entire 70-minute performance, he speaks as her - his voice carrying her words, memories, and pain. Lauren only occasionally interjects, sparking brief moments of dialogue. But for the most part, she sits silently, gazing out at the audience as her narrative is projected through him.

After her hit sold-out show at last year’s Fringe, national treasure Miriam Margolyes returns with a brand new piece. At 84 years young, Margolyes knows she doesn't have to prove herself to anyone. Sporting a beautifully vibrant gown, she commands the stage with a charming combination of crude remarks, cheeky innuendos, and brilliantly timed one-liners.

Advertised as a 'moving and darkly comic remix' of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Lost Lear retells the play through the eyes of Joy, an elderly dementia patient and former actress trapped in a perpetual memory of rehearsing King Lear for the stage. Doctors and nurses step into her imagined world, supplying sound effects and taking on roles to maintain her charade. But when her long-absent son Connor arrives seeking reconciliation, his presence unsettles the fragile theatre of make-believe she has so carefully constructed.

Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, The Crown) redefines and reclaims the solo show in a lyrical tapestry where resistance, displacement and selfhood are delicately woven through an avant-garde aesthetic. At its heart lies a searing question voiced at the start: ‘This nowhere is safe. But there are places in the world where nowhere is safe. And when the unfathomable becomes persistent, where do you go?’

Mary: A Gig Theatre Show is a cool concept. It advertises itself as a blend of folk rock music and spoken word formulating a feminist retelling of the story of Mary Queen of Scots. In theory it feels inspired by the hit show Six, but with it's own unique voice. The idea of a 'gig theatre show' suggests an interesting new form to explore within the realm of performance. Unfortunately, in practice the show certainly gives us 'Gig', but severely lacks in 'Theatre'. 

Two people. Many characters. One space. Alexander Burnett and Ellie Whittaker of Voloz Collective make a splash at the Fringe this year with The Crawl—a short, slick, and hilarious physical theatre piece that dives headfirst into the drama of a high-stakes swimming competition.

Scottish comedy legend Johnny McKnight examines the panto dame through an inventive new lens in She’s Behind You. Drawing on his experience writing more than 30 pantos and playing 18 dames, McKnight unpacks the role through a lively mesh of songs, stand-up, dance, and audience participation.

Four generations of Northern Irish women gather for a 90th birthday party in Karis Kelly’s Consumed, and what unfolds is a pitch-black dark comedy with razor wit and gasp-inducing shock. Eileen (Julia Dearden), Jenny (Caoimhe Farren), Gilly (Andrea Irvine) and Muireann (Muireann Ní Fhaogáin) initially present a hyper-realistic family: they laugh, they bicker, and beneath it all, they carry the weight of generational trauma. It’s laugh-out-loud funny one moment and devastatingly reflective the next, forcing us to think about what it really means to be “Northern Irish.”

Flora Wilson Brown’s six-hander examines climate change across 250 years of real and imagined history. In 1856, Eunice begins to question whether carbon dioxide might signal that something is going terribly wrong. In 2027 London, Clare falls for Dan as she faces impending heatwaves and floods. By 2100 in Svalbard, Ana endures an 86-day storm raging outside, questioning the doomed future of our planet.

Celebrated Scottish writer Douglas Maxwell returns to the Tron Theatre, more than two decades after his debut with Our Bad Magnet in 2000. In this new work, Jordan Young stars as Ronnie, a dog walker who took up the job as a coping mechanism during lockdown. But when a mishap sends all the dogs bolting off their leads, Ronnie plunges into disarray —and must confront some uncomfortable truths.

Few stories capture the wonder of childhood and the weight of war as gracefully as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. CS Lewis’s beloved tale of four siblings stumbling through a wardrobe into a magical world could risk feeling outdated—yet Sally Cookson brings us something altogether stranger and more powerful. Her Narnia is surreal, haunting, and rooted in themes of spiritual rebirth—less Sunday school, more sacred myth.

Katori Hall’s Olivier-winning play follows Martin Luther King Jr. on his final night on Earth in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. He orders coffee—but what arrives is Camae, a maid with a secret mission. What unfolds is a blend of realism and surrealism that humanizes a mythologized figure and challenges us to see that greatness lies not in perfection, but in perseverance.

Theatre company Say It Again, Sorry? brought their smash Fringe hit Earnest? to the King's last week, turning Oscar Wilde’s classic of mistaken identity on its head in a brilliantly chaotic, genre-bending take that joyfully challenges theatrical convention.

Students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland upload Anya Reiss’s unique adaptation of Spring Awakening to the Tron this week. Reiss propels Frank Wedekind’s controversial 19th-century tale into the digital age. Set under an umbrella of smartphones, pornographic sites, social media, and online subcultures, the play explores how today’s teens are bombarded with information yet still starved of emotional guidance from adults and society.

'Myra’s Story' is a one-woman play by Brian Foster, a much-acclaimed hit at the Edinburgh Fringe. Fionna Hewitt-Twamley steps effortlessly into the shoes of Myra, a middle-aged homeless alcoholic wandering the streets of Dublin.