Open air Passion play returns

Thomas Baldwin reports on the return of a major Easter production in Edinburgh.

EDINBURGH’S open air Passion Play returns this Easter with a live performance in Princes Street Gardens for the first time since 2018.

The Edinburgh Easter Play has become a popular fixture in the city, staging the Gospel story every year on Easter Saturday in the iconic location of West Princes Street Gardens, below Edinburgh Castle.

Having been forced to cancel planned performances in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic, the team is delighted to be back in rehearsals for this year’s play, ‘Hope Rises’, which will be performed on Saturday April 16.

The play is created by a community cast from across the city, working with a professional director and a professional actor playing Jesus. Each production approaches the story in a new way.

Director Suzanne Lofthus said: “In 2018, before the world was turned upside down by the pandemic, we produced a version of the story devised by the cast. The theme of hope seemed to resonate even more in 2022, so we have revised that script for this year.

“‘Hope Rises’ is a fast-paced production, telling the Gospel story in a modern and vibrant manner. The actors are a group of displaced people who have arrived in a new location, having fled their homes.

“They have nothing except the belongings they have managed to gather together in ten minutes. The one thing they have is their stories.

“Just after we started rehearsing, the crisis in Afghanistan happened and images of displaced people fleeing oppression were all over the news. Now, we are seeing images of Ukrainians fleeing their country. We couldn’t have imagined how immediate this would feel.

“In the play, this disparate group begins to tell their stories of how their lives were changed by an encounter with Jesus, bringing hope into a world of darkness.

The world still needs that light and hope today.”

The first Easter Play was performed in Princes Street Gardens in 2005, with a core cast and crew who had worked on earlier productions of ‘The Life of Jesus Christ’ in the grounds of Dundas Castle. Over the years, the plays have attracted audiences of up to 3,000 people.

In 2014, the team staged The Edinburgh Passion, by the playwright Rob Drummond, a radical contemporary version of the story set in a newly independent Scotland, which was acclaimed by critics and audiences.

The following year, the play was On The Edge, a series of monologues by characters on the fringes of the story.

In 2021, when Covid-19 restrictions prevented a live performance, the actors recorded an audio play, ‘Saturday’, which was streamed live on the Easter Play website, and made a series of short filmed monologues at locations around the city. These projects were so successful, with viewers and listeners tuning in from all over the country, that the organisers have decided to livestream this year’s production too.

Lofthus said: “While there is no substitute for the live performance, the livestream means that audiences from all over will be able to enjoy the play.

“We are delighted to be back in Princes Street Gardens. Ours will be one of the first live events in the Gardens as restrictions lift, so it really does feel like hope returning.” ¤

‘Hope Rises’, The Edinburgh Easter Play, will be in West Princes Street Gardens on Saturday 16th April at 2pm. For more information see www.easterplay.org