Easter play returns to Edinburgh

This year’s Edinburgh Easter Play will be a large-scale promenade Passion Play, performed in traditional costume on Easter Saturday in Princes Street Gardens.

The Play aims to tell the story of Jesus afresh every year. Director Suzanne Lofthus, who has been with the production since its early days, says it is more important now than ever before.

“We realised that increasingly people don’t really know the story,” she says. “This year, we are producing a large-scale traditional Passion Play because we wanted to go back and tell the story with a really clear narrative.

“The reason for the mystery plays in medieval times was because the population was illiterate. We’re not illiterate these days, but we might not know these stories. We’re not there to preach or say one way is better than another, but we feel the story deserves to be told.”

The Easter Play is the largest open-air community play in the city, and the team makes a new production from scratch every year, from traditional costumed versions to 2014’s edgy contemporary take by playwright Rob Drummond set in a nearfuture Scotland. Even this year’s traditional Passion Play has a twist: the narrator is Mary Magdalene.

The play is the most ambitious production for some years involving more than 100 people as actors, stewards, costume-makers, caterers and sound technicians, not to mention the engineers who will construct the cross on which Jesus (actor Calum Barbour) will be crucified. The team come from all walks of life, from all faiths and none. Some are Easter Play veterans, others newcomers. Almost everyone is a volunteer.

The first Easter Play was performed in Princes Street Gardens in 2005 as Passion Plays were making a comeback in cities around the world. A group of local Christians from different churches felt that Edinburgh, the festival city, should have its own open-air dramatisation of the Easter Story.

Past productions have attracted audiences of up to 3,000 people. Edinburgh-based Cutting Edge Theatre, which now produces the play, hopes to embed it in the city’s calendar, supported by local churches and attracting locals and visitors alike.

The play begins at 2pm on Easter Saturday, April 8, in Princes Street Gardens West. For more information see www. easterplay.org