All Edinburgh Theatre

All Edinburgh Theatre is an online theatre news and reviews publication covering the stages of Edinburgh, Scotland. Published at all-edinburgh-theatre.com, it carries reviews, previews, news and weekly listings for the city's professional, amateur, student and grassroots theatre, and it is run and edited by Thom Dibdin, a freelance journalist who was for many years the Scotland correspondent of The Stage, the national theatre newspaper.

The site describes its offer simply as reviews, news and previews edited by Dibdin, and its banner records that it was formerly titled The New Annals of the Edinburgh Stage. Its archive reaches back to at least 2009, making it one of the longest-running independent sources of theatre coverage devoted to a single Scottish city, and it continues to publish through the year, with its heaviest output during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe each August.

Thom Dibdin and the Site's Background

All Edinburgh Theatre is run by Thom Dibdin, who describes himself on the site as a freelance journalist with a special interest in writing about Edinburgh, theatre and the arts. He was the Scotland correspondent of The Stage until 2022, a role that involved covering Scottish theatre for the industry's national paper of record, and that professional background shapes the site's tone: its news coverage treats Edinburgh theatre as an industry as well as an art form, following venues, companies and funding questions alongside reviews.

The site is not exclusively a one-person operation. Its about page notes that it carries contributions from other writers and invites prospective contributors to get in touch through its contact form, and its reviews appear under several bylines, particularly during the Fringe, when the volume of productions in the city exceeds what any single critic could attend. Dibdin remains its owner and editor-in-chief, however, and his byline accounts for the great majority of its reviews across its archive.

History and Archive

The site's archive contains reviews dating from 2009 and 2010, including coverage of productions at small Edinburgh venues such as the GRV on Guthrie Street and the St Bride's Centre, reviewed in the same format the site uses today, with star ratings and Dibdin's byline. Early reviews in the archive include the Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group's productions, student companies and new writing at fringe-scale venues, indicating that the breadth of coverage across professional and amateur work was present from the site's early years rather than added later.

The site's former title, The New Annals of the Edinburgh Stage, is preserved in its banner artwork, a name that signals the documentary ambition behind the project: to keep a running record of what is staged in Edinburgh, week by week and festival by festival. The site's design retains older web conventions, including an RSS feed and links to its Twitter, Facebook and Flickr presences, consistent with a publication that has evolved in place over a long period rather than being repeatedly relaunched.

Reviews and the Star System

Reviews are the site's core content. They follow a recognisable format: a star rating out of five, a one-word or short-phrase verdict, the venue and run dates, and a review that assesses the production's writing, performances, staging and suitability for its audience. The site maintains a dedicated page explaining its star system, setting out what each rating means so that readers can interpret judgements consistently across reviewers and across the very different scales of production it covers.

The range of venues in its review archive illustrates its remit. It reviews large-scale touring productions at the Edinburgh Playhouse and the Festival Theatre, new work and revivals at the city's producing houses, and amateur and student productions at venues including the Church Hill Theatre, the Royal Scots Club, the St Bride's Centre and university spaces. A production by an amateur company is reviewed in the same format, and on the same star scale, as a national tour.

An Equal Standard for Local and National Work

That consistency reflects an explicit critical philosophy. In an interview with The Indiependent, Dibdin stressed that local and national theatre should have equal opportunity to achieve five stars and one star, arguing that money and resources are not indicative of a production's success and that local theatre should not suffer under that assumption. The same interview recorded his view of Edinburgh as a cultural city punching above its weight, with two major producing houses and, during the Fringe, a very large number of productions mounted in a comparatively small city.

The interview also gives an insight into the experiences behind his reviewing: he recalled being completely taken by Grid Iron Theatre Company's 1996 production of The Bloody Chamber, staged in the underground vaults of Mary King's Close, as an early immersive production that changed his expectations of what a performance space could be, and named Grid Iron as a company he has followed ever since for work staged in places from oil platforms to shipyards. Site-specific and unconventional Edinburgh work remains a visible strand of the site's coverage.

News and Listings

Alongside reviews, All Edinburgh Theatre publishes theatre news affecting Edinburgh and the surrounding area. Items in its news coverage have included the progress of the King's Theatre redevelopment, reported as approaching its halfway point according to Capital Theatres, the charity that runs the building; the closure of the bistro at the Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh after that venue went dark in March 2023 following the discovery of crumbling concrete above its performance spaces; and the securing of the future of the Howden Park Centre in Livingston, where the charity running the Reconnect Regal Theatre in Bathgate won a long-term lease to operate the venue to 2035.

The site also publishes weekly previews and listings of what is on Edinburgh's stages, typically running from Monday to Sunday, mixing professional productions with ballet, opera, amateur work and one-off events, and it carries casting calls and open auditions, such as open calls for the annual Edinburgh Easter Play in Princes Street Gardens. These service elements make it a practical reference for Edinburgh theatregoers and performers as well as a critical publication.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Coverage

August transforms the site's workload. Edinburgh hosts the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, during which thousands of performances take place across the city, and All Edinburgh Theatre organises its Fringe coverage in dedicated sections. For the 2025 Fringe its site structure separated reviews and Fringe news from a set of category listings covering amateur theatre, musicals and opera, grassroots theatre, dance, professional and funded theatre, cabaret, comedy and spoken word, theatre for children, and youth and student theatre, together with a list of professional Edinburgh-based artists appearing at the festivals compiled with Edinburgh Performing Arts Development.

That categorisation reflects the site's wider function during the festival: with far more productions than any reader could choose between unaided, structured listings and a growing bank of star-rated reviews provide a navigable record. Its Fringe reviews follow the same format as its year-round coverage, applying the same star system to a one-week student production and to a headline show at a major festival venue.

Audience and Place in Scottish Theatre Media

The site's audience is primarily Edinburgh's theatregoing public, the city's large community of amateur, student and grassroots performers, and the professional sector that Dibdin covered for The Stage. National theatre coverage of Scotland has contracted over the years, and Edinburgh's local press reviews only a portion of the work staged in the city, particularly outside the festivals. A dedicated, continuously updated record of reviews, news and listings for the city's stages fills a gap that neither the national industry press nor general local news titles attempts to fill in the same depth.

For companies, a review on the site forms part of the permanent record of a production: its archive preserves star ratings and full reviews for shows that played for a handful of performances in small rooms, documentation that would otherwise largely disappear once a run ended. The support page on the site, inviting readers to contribute towards its costs, indicates a small-scale, reader-supported operation rather than a commercial media business.