Theatre News

John Tiffany's production of The Glass Menagerie to open at the Edinburgh International Festival 2016

The full line up for the Edinburgh International Festival has been announced

Fergus Linehan EIF Festival Director
Fergus Linehan, EIF Festival Director

© Colin Hattersley

The line up for this year's Edinburgh International Festival will feature John Tiffany's Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie.

The piece transferred from the King's Theatre to Broadway in 2013 and stars Cherry Jones as Amanda Wingfield. Tennessee Williams' play is a semi-autobiographical look at his own family and looks at a fading 'Southern belle' and her cripplingly shy daughter.

The Glass Menagerie will feature as part of the line up of this year's International Festival, which runs alongside the Edinburgh Fringe Festival between 5 and 29 August.

EIF Festival director Fergus Linehan launched the festival today, saying: "The International Festival is an invitation from the people of Scotland to people from all over the world to join us in an unparalleled celebration of creativity, virtuosity and originality."

Barry Humphries, known for his alter ego Dame Edna Everage, will be making his EIF debut, performing an evening of music from the time of the Weimar Republic alongside cabaret star Meow Meow.

Actor Alan Cumming will stage a nightly show called Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs! throughout August at The Hub. There will also be a world premiere of a new piece from American company The Team called Anything That Gives Off Light.

Kicking off the festival is a free outdoor public event called Deep Time on 10.30pm on 7 August. The piece is a digitally animated artwork which projects visuals inspired by the city's past onto Edinburgh Castle and Castle Rock. Deep Time has a soundtrack of music by Scottish rock band Mogwai.

Shakespeare will feature strongly in this year's EIF, with three international companies staging productions of his work. Thomas Ostermeier's reworking of Richard III performed by Berlin's Schaubuhne Theatre arrives alongside Cheek by Jowl and Moscow's Pushkin Theatre's Measure for Measure which draws paralells with modern Russia. French company Eat a Crocodile also perform Shake a five piece re-imagining of Twelfth Night.

There will also be a series for pieces of children and families, including Akram Khan's Chotto Desh, which is a reworking of his Olivier Award-winning solo show DESH. Star ballet dancer Natalia Osipova will perform, along with her company and Sergei Polunin, three brand new dance works created for her by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant and Arthur Pita.

The full line up includes a series of classical, opera and pop music events. Tickets go on sale Saturday 16 April at 10am.