The 10 Best Shows coming to Edinburgh this Winter

THE dark nights are drawing in and, with another Fringe consigned to the pages of history, the Capital's theatres are launching their autumn/winter seasons. A huge choice of musicals, comedy and drama tour to the Capital over the next four months. Here are the '˜10 Best Shows' to see in Edinburgh this winter.

Madagascar

MOUTHPIECE

Traverse Theatre

SALISBURY Crags. Twilight. A woman takes a step forward into the air. A teenage boy pulls her back. Two lives are changed forever.

Mouthpiece

The latest full-length play from Kieran Hurley tells the story of two unlikely lives intertwined; Libby, a one time writer who whiles away her days in trendy cafes, and Declan, a talented young man struggling with a volatile home life defined by poverty.

As they form an uneasy friendship, Libby spots an opportunity to put her writing career back on track...

Surprising, darkly comic and at times shocking, Mouthpiece takes a deeply personal look at the different Edinburghs that often exist side by side.

1-22 December, 8pm (matinees 2.30pm), £10-£15, 0131-228 1404

Keith Jack in Fame The Musical

REBUS: LONG SHADOWS

The King’s

DI Rebus is retired but the shadows of his former life still follow him through the streets of the Capital.

Whisky helped but now he’s denying himself that pleasure - when the daughter of a murder victim appears outside his flat, he’s back on the case and off the wagon...

Ian Rankin’s beloved creation comes to the stage for the very first time with Charles Lawson, Corrie’s Jim McDonald in the title role. (Ages 12+)

8-13 October, 7.30pm (matinees 2.30pm), £18-£31.50, 0131-529 6000

MADAGASCAR

The Playhouse

ONE for all the family. The smash hit musical features all the favourite crack-a-lackin’ creatures as they escape from their home in New York’s Central Park Zoo and embark on an unexpected journey to the madcap world of King Julien’s Madagascar.

Stars X Factor winner Matt Terry. (Ages 3+)

2-6 October, 7.30pm (matinees 2.30pm), £16.90-£49.40, 0844-871 3014

FAME

The King’s

DALKEITH’S Keith Jack comes home to star in the 30th anniversary tour of Fame alongside Mica Paris and Hollyoaks’ Jorgie Porter.

Based on the 1980 film, the musical following the lives of students at New York’s High School For The Performing Arts as they navigate their way through the highs and lows of their training in the hope they will live forever...

23-27 October, 7.30pm (2.30pm), £18.50-£33.50, 0131-529 6000

MATTHEW BOURNE’S SWAN LAKE

Festival Theatre

THE ground-breaking production returns with a fresh look for the 21st century.

Retaining the iconic elements of the original, Matthew Bourne and award-winning designers Lez Brotherston and Paule Constable create an exciting re-imagining of the classic production - thrilling, audacious, witty and emotive.

16-20 October, 7.30pm (matinees 2.30pm), £19-£48.50, 0131-529 6000

VULCAN 7

The King’s

WRITTEN by and starring Comic Strips’ Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer, best remembered as Vyvyan and Neil in The Young Ones, this new comedy charts the lives of two actors.

Gary Savage and Hugh Delavois were students at RADA together.

Now in their sixties, they meet in an Icelandic wasteland, on the set of a fantasy movie.

Hugh has had a plodding career but has landed the small but regular role of Vulcan’s butler and is making his seventh film for the franchise.

Gary, a one-time Hollywood A-lister, has fallen on lean times and is playing a guest monster with four hours in make-up and one word in the script.

Sparks fly as old wounds are opened, then the director goes AWOL, the catering truck’s on the wrong side of a ravine, and the volcanic activity is growing more and more lively by the minute...

5-10 November, 7.30pm (matinees 2.30pm), £19-£32.50, 0131-529 6000

KINKY BOOTS

The Playhouse

WITH songs by pop icon Cyndi Lauper and a book by Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein, Kinky Boots takes you from the factory floor to the glamorous catwalks of Milan.

Charlie Price is struggling to live up to his father’s expectations and continue the family business of Price & Son.

With the shoe factory’s future hanging in the balance, help arrives in the unlikely but spectacular form of Lola - a fabulous performer in need of some sturdy new stilettos.

10 December 2018-5 January 2019, various times, £19.50-£73.50, 0131-529 6000

RAIN MAN

The King’s

BASED on the Oscar winning film, Matthew Horne stars in the role made famous by Dustin Hoffman.

When self-centred salesman Charlie Babbitt discovers that his long-lost brother Raymond, an autistic savant with a genius for numbers, has inherited the family fortune, he sets out to get ‘his half’...

1-6 October, 7.30pm (matinees 2.30pm), £18-£31.50, 0131-529 6000

CALENDAR GIRLS

Festival Theatre

GARY BARLOW and Tim Firth’s new musical charting the true story of a group of ordinary ladies who achieved something extraordinary stars Fern Britton, Anna-Jane Casey, Sara Crowe, Karen Dunbar, Ruth Madoc, Rebecca Storm and Denise Welch.

2-13 October, 7.30pm (matinees 2.30pm), £20-£45, 0131- 529 6000

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

The Playhouse

FORTY years on from its UK cinema release, Saturday Night Fever is reimagined and revitalised in a big new music and dance spectacular.

Whilst paying homage to the 1977 John Travolta classic, this new stage version starring Casualty’s Richard Winsor, promises more drama, more music and new choreography.

23-27 October, 7.30pm (matinees 2.30pm), £26.90-£72.90, 0844-871 3014