Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Four stars
Edinburgh has so much to answer for in David Greig’s new stage adaptation of David Nicholls’ novel, just as it has in the book itself, as well as its film and TV adaptations. The city’s influence is there at the start as Emma and Dexter drunkenly fall together on graduation day 1988 in what on Rae Smith’s revolving set looks like a mock-up of the University of Edinburgh’s Teviot House Union long before its recent makeover. It’s there as well in the Rankeillor Street student flatshare on the city’s southside where Emma lives with what turn out to be mates for life. Finally, it’s up there on Arthur’s Seat, where everything sort of begins, and where, twenty years on, and with their lives turned upside down, it will never fully end.
As with its source, Greig’s play charts Emma and Dexter’s parallel lives every St. Swithin’s Day on which they intermittently collide. This comes first as friends, then soulmates, before fate takes its natural course. Of course, given that Emma is a book loving working class girl from Leeds who wants to change the world, and Dexter a posh boy charmer with that world at his feet, none of this should ever have happened. As it is, while Dexter accidentally lands in the thick of rave culture and the bleeding edge excesses of 1990s yoof TV, Emma works all hours in a London restaurant before training to be a teacher.
With a digital display above the stage marking the years, this is a lot to pack in throughout Max Webster’s joyous production. It took Netflix fourteen episodes to get through it. Performed on Smith’s customised auditorium, which puts some of the audience on stage in a reflection of the play’s sense of everyday intimacy, it is so full of heart and soul that occasional longeurs can be forgiven.
The fourteen-strong cast sing and dance their way through Em and Dex’s very extended affair by way of Abner and Amanda Ramirez’s songs in a show that also reflects a British society where class division still leads the narrative. It even looks like it was more fun to write Dexter’s self indulgent excesses than it was with Emma’s more workaday lifestyle.
Standouts in the cast beyond the two leads include Dan Buckley as Emma’s hapless comedian boyfriend Ian, Josefina Gabrielle as Dexter’s Ab-fab style mother, and Kelly Hampson as Dexter’s terminally mirthless wife, Sylvie.
At the centre of the show, however, are Sharon Rose as a soulful Emma, and Jamie Muscato as a Hugh Grantish Dexter. Both carry the show with an unabashed chemistry that has you rooting for them to get together, even as they are soaking up a lifetime of memories. In the end, this is a show that says to count your losses as well as your blessings. This is how futures are made, with all the messy, complicated baggage that goes with them.
The Herald, March 13th 2026
Ends
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