The Lyceum’s familiar auditorium has been transformed beyond recognition to create a new space for the staging of an adaptation of the now iconic romantic 2009 novel from English writer David Nicholls by former Artistic Director David Greig. With a view to creating a sense of involvement with the unfolding performance, the stage is in the round with a few cabaret style tables in front of two sets of steep seating facing each other on either side, with musicians seated in side boxes like a set of parentheses.
The story opens on 15th July (which is apparently St Swithan’s Day) at Edinburgh University in 1988 when a group of new graduates are celebrating their achievements, each announcing their varying hopes and ideals. Part of the group are the main characters of the story, Dexter, played by a Hugh Grant channelling Jamie Muscato and Emma performed with Yorkshire feistiness by Sharon Rose, who spend a chaste night together and pledge to meet each year on the date for 20 years to see how their respective lives pan out. The passage of time is displayed above the stage by big digital numbers but not in the costumes that over all remain beautiful but non era specific.
What follows is a modern fairy tale of sliding door moments and missed opportunities. These two young people, who are divided by class, politics, ideals, outlooks and in this production, race, retain an unsatisfactory but lasting bond for most of the story. Across the 20 years we are taken to London, Greece and Paris with Em diligently posting worthy books to the shallow Dex, including Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy that so influenced Nicholls’ original novel. We see loss, affairs, divorce, death, sex, drugs, drink, successes and failures.
Like the 2024 TV production, this World Premiere production from the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and Melting Pot, transposes the original setting from Bristol to Edinburgh, but the move feels tokenistic. A line claiming there’s a Scots saying that you have to climb Arthur’s Seat to know what Heaven’s like was heard with bemusement until the character Callum’s (Peter Hannah) confession that he’d made it up and was met with spontaneous applause from sections of the audience.
Fans of the highly successful original text may be fascinated to see a new adaptation of the original, that has been made in to a film in 2011 and a more recent TV series, but seeing this production without that familiarity leaves not much more than the experience of over 2 ½ hours of varied scenes on a small stage with unmemorable songs about these supposedly poignant days over 20 years. The radical staging doesn’t make up for the less than radical show with its rather clichéd dialogue and attitudes that may well appeal to the demographic of the novel’s readers.
Age recommend: 12+
Running time: 2 hours 40 mins (incl. interval)
Dates: 7th March to 19th April 2026
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 