One Day top box office earner in Edinburgh theatre's history as new programme revealed
The musical extended its run at the Lyceum
It was the new musical version of the Edinburgh-set story of the best-selling David Nicholls novel, which was performed to sell-out audiences earlier this year.
Now the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh has revealed that One Day was the highest grossing play ever at its box office and looks set for a West End run.
Artistic director James Brining said the show had been among the most successful in the theatre’s history as he unveiled classic musical Guys and Dolls and a new production of Romeo and Juliet among the theatre's new season highlights.
Mr Brining said the Lyceum was in a better financial position this year after a period of instability, following the success of the Edinburgh-based musical and other popular shows including Jodie Comer's Prima Facie, which sold out faster than any other production in the theatre's history - as well as being granted multi-year funding from Creative Scotland 18 months ago.
The new season also includes new adaptations of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children and George Orwell's 1984 by Scottish playwrights Zinnie Harris and Chris Hannan, respectively.
Other previously announced productions include the National Theatre of Scotland’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, starring Gayle Rankin.
Mr Brining said One Day had been “very successful” for the theatre, which would receive some royalties from a West End run.
He said: “It took the most amount of money, gross, at the box office. It had incredible audience loyalty and the prospect of playing the West End [is good], it is destined for the West End.”
He added: “Our ambition here at the Lyceum is to create work of scale and to diversify and grow the audiences that come to the theatre, both in the sense of the taste of the audience to come and experiment with things they otherwise wouldn’t necessarily see, but also to numerically grow the audience.”
The artistic director, who took up his post a year ago after leaving a post at Leeds Playhouse, said the opportunities available to people starting a career in the arts in Scotland had "greatly diminished" since he began work in 1997 at a small Edinburgh-based theatre company.
He said a musical like One Day, as well as last year’s Wild Rose and the upcoming Guys and Dolls, needed “millions of pounds of investment”.
He said: “It’s important we engage a wide audience, get new audience members in and offer Scottish theatre artists the opportunity to work in this repertoire in the place they live in. This has become harder and harder to do that.”
He compared the theatre's new production of Guys and Dolls to one staged in 2001, when it had a cast of 22 people and was put on solely by the Lyceum, rather than in a co-production with three other theatres, with additional support from a private philanthropist.
“That’s a really stark indicator of how the theatre context has changed over 25 years,” he said. “25 years later, with a smaller cast - we can’t afford 22 people - it takes us, the Citizens Theatre, Aberdeen and Eden Court and Walter Nimmo and his wife Norma putting in a significant sum of money to get anywhere near being able to do a show that 25 years ago, the Lyceum was able to do within its repertoire.”
New executive director Lyndsey Jackson, who joined the theatre in January from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said the theatre was “out of the high risk environment”, but wanted to build a “more resilient future”.
“The organisation is out of danger, but is still very fragile,” she said. “As many cultural organisations will tell you, we have very limited reserves, so our focus over the next two or three years is a plan of resilience and sustainability and get out of our hand-to-mouth cycle so we can invest in new works.”
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