Elicia Daly in Christmas Dinner

The Scotsman 30 November 2021

You can see why someone might feel down about Christmas. Last year, celebrations were all-but cancelled. This year, the fog of Covid uncertainty has yet to clear. Anyone who has lost someone close to them in the past two years might find it hard to get into the festive swing of things.

That, at any rate, is the case for the woman at the heart of Christmas Dinner, the seasonal entertainment by playwright Robert Alan Evans at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum. Played by Elicia Daly, she is a stagehand called Lesley who has had, as the theatre puts it, a “horrible year”. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).