Edinburgh International Festival: Scotsman critics on which shows to book tickets for

​Kelly Apter on Dance After slim pickings at last year’s EIF, it’s heartening to see five dance shows heading our way – completely dissimilar works, all exciting in their own distinct way, reflecting past, present and future.

Having seen Figures in Extinction, I unreservedly advise buying a ticket. Nederlands Dans Theater, choreographer Crystal Pite and director Simon McBurney have produced a compelling triptych which touches on the human need to feel part of something bigger. Incredible dancing sits alongside sobering facts about the species no longer in existence.

Figures in Extinction | Rahi Rezvani

Figures in Extinction also demonstrates the benefits of having two creative figureheads, and we’ll no doubt see the same impressive outcome from Mary, Queen of Scots. Scottish Ballet’s new production is a co-creation from choreographer Sophie Laplane and storyteller James Bonas, and watching the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth I play out in dance is an exciting prospect.

I gave The Dan Daw Show an excellent review in The Scotsman when it appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023. Hilarious and poignant, it’s a celebration of empowerment, with disabled dancer Daw taking ownership of pain and degradation, on his terms. Superb choreographer Kim Brandstrup is also a known quantity (2023’s Minotaur), and his collaboration with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Breaking Bach, sounds fascinating. Pull up a bean bag and enjoy a collision of Bach and hip hop.

Lebanese-French company Maqamat’s Dance People, meanwhile, is less well known on these shores, but anything that invites audience participation and questions dictatorship gets my vote.

Joyce McMillan on Theatre The theme of EIF 2025 – set by Nicola Benedetti, in her third year as festival director – is “The Truth We Seek”. You can see its traces in every one of this year theatre’s highlights; and no single ticket, this year, is likely to embody more of the festival’s spirit than the world premiere of new play Make It Happen, about the near-collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland during the great financial crash of 2008.

Born from an idea proposed by the actor Brian Cox – who will appear in the play as economist Adam Smith – Make It Happen is co-produced by the National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep, and written by James Graham, famous for his award winning UK state-of-the nation plays; and superb Scottish actor Sandy Grierson will play Fred Goodwin, the overreaching CEO who became a byword for an age of devastating financial arrogance and recklessness.

Brian Cox | Lia Toby / Getty Images

Also likely to attract those in search of hard truths brilliantly staged are the programme’s two international shows, the restaging of Faustus In Africa!, first created in 1995 by the legendary Handspring puppet company of South Africa, and the Belgian company FB Bergman’s wordless 70-minute theatre piece Works And Days, which evokes humankind’s changing relationship with the land on which all life depends. Works And Days invites us to consider the communal way of life we have lost, and the colourful individuality we have gained, at the cost of separation from nature and each other; while Faustus In Africa! poses ever more urgent questions about the reckless deals we make with the devil for profit and pleasure, despite the catastrophic costs of colonialism, and of the climate emergency.

Fiona Shepherd on Contemporary Music At first glance, it looks as if contemporary music is missing from the 2025 EIF programme, with the big beast headliners, so prevalent in recent years, a casualty of budgetary uncertainty. Instead, however, both contemporary and traditional music are intertwined with the jazz, world and experimental sounds threaded through a wildly eclectic series of concerts at The Hub.

This grand venue with an intimate feel will be in action on a nightly basis, hosting everything from Carpathian tunes played by a string quintet (VOŁOSI) to a didgeridoo maestro (William Barton), from inventive reboots of traditional Norwegian music (Østerlide) to Sufi poetry, action painting and world class transcontinental connections in the Aga Khan Music Programme.

Homegrown favourites include mesmeric singer/songwriter Kathryn Joseph, turbo-folk supergroup Ímar, Glasgow-based string band Kinnaris Quintet plus a new project, Triptic, from members of klezmer veterans Moishe’s Bagel. Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Irish fiddle player Aoife Ní Bhriain combine Celtic and classical elements in their collaboration.

The Up Late series expands to take in concerts by irrepressible saxophone/spoken word artist Alabaster DePlume, sleek analogue electronica maven Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, kora player Ballaké Sissoko in collaboration with French cellist Vincent Segal and the synth/piano minimalism of Dutch composers Joep Beving and Maarten Vos.

Many of these musicians are rarely glimpsed on Scottish stages; others have an established rapport with EIF audiences. Djembe player Sidiki Dembélé returns to the festival, this time with a band in tow, while jazz bassist Endea Owens makes it a hat trick of Hub appearances, as she closes the whole festival in feelgood style.

Ken Walton on Classical Music Festival director Nicola Benedetti has referred to her 2025 programme as “more compact” due to financial constraints, but has also said she is confident that the recently-announced increase in Creative Scotland’s multi-year EIF funding will ensure more substantial future programming in the run-up to the event’s 80th anniversary in 2027.

In terms of classical music, the most obvious purse-tightening is in staged opera. The lack of conventional productions may disappoint traditionalists who felt last year’s uptick marked a turnaround from previous erosion – Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre is strangely opera-less – but innovation persists. A bold Australian staging at Edinburgh Playhouse of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice incorporates circus acrobats, with Iestyn Davis and Samantha Clarke in the title roles. At The Lyceum, composer/librettist Huang Ruo’s Book of Mountains and Seas uses reimagined Chinese myth to explore today’s environmental challenges. Operas-in-concert include Maxim Emelyanychev applying his irrefutable charm to Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito with the SCO and Sir Antonio Pappano directing the LSO in Puccini’s Suor Angelica.

Keith Saunders

Less obviously affected are the Usher Hall and Queen’s Hall concert series. The former opens with Tavener’s eight-hour choral epic The Veil of the Temple and closes with Mendelssohn’s Elijah, both featuring the Festival Chorus (celebrating its 60th Anniversary) and RSNO.

Carnegie Hall’s NYO2 youth orchestra, Poland’s NFM Leopoldinum and the LSO offer distinctive orchestral residencies. Other ensembles include the Melbourne Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra and the extraordinary Aurora Orchestra, playing Shostakovich’s Fifth from memory.

Opening the Queen’s Hall series are percussionist Colin Currie and The King’s Singers, and further highlights include mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra, baritone Florian Boesch, the Dunedin Consort and the Belcea Quartet.

Tickets for this year’s Edinburgh International Festival are now on sale. For more information, and to book, visit www.eif.co.uk