The 10 shortlisted Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 shows contending for Musical Theatre Review’s Best Musical Award have been announced.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 has seen a great increase in the number of musical theatre productions. Artists from across the globe have converged on Edinburgh, striving for excellence in this most challenging theatrical form.
“The Musical Theatre Review team have covered a huge number of productions this year and highlighted the best of work from Korea to England, from Australia to the USA and beyond,” said Edinburgh editor Fiona Orr, who has led the team throughout the festival. “The nominees represent the very best of the wide array of talent here in Edinburgh.”
MTR publisher Lisa Martland added: “Congratulations to all the MTR Best Musical nominees and everyone involved in presenting such high-quality musical theatre productions at this year’s Fringe. Fiona Orr and her team (Steven Wren, Molly Glenn, James Bryce, Charlotte Purkis) have done a great job of covering a wide range of original shows with different styles and subjects ranging from the environment to football, from history to pop music, from tech to mortality. They are all deserving nominees.”
The Musical Theatre Review Best Musical Award was created to recognise excellence in the challenging form of musical theatre in all its variety of styles. The winner will be revealed during the final few days of the Fringe.
The shortlist follows.
1457, The Boy at Rest
Poem and Star / Korean Season by GCC & AtoBiz; Studio One at Assembly George Square Studios
We’re in a heightened world of Greek tragedy, Hamlet and The Lion King. A young king is dethroned by his wicked uncle and sent into exile, only to be executed at 17. The entire production, directed by Ho-young Lee, is so fabulously stylish. The grand themes of love, honour, ambition and loss are handled delicately. The poetry and symbolism of the lyrics (Ji-yune Sang) are mesmerising.
Driving in Circles
EPs Theater; McIntosh at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower
Jay Eddy is incredibly skilful at engaging listeners and keeping them there even when there are long asides into dreams, meditations and trance-like states. This genre-challenging ‘art-pop’ indie musical theatre show seamlessly combines astoundingly well-enunciated monologue with dynamically-performed original songs, provocative in their content, form and style.
Footballers’ Wives: The Musical
Wildpark Entertainment and Big Broad Productions; Music Hall at Assembly Rooms
All the performances are top rate. The songs are terrifically catchy with Bond-like luscious orchestrations. Congratulations, to Kath Gotts for the music and lyrics, alongside Maureen Chadwick’s exemplary book. This is a perfect example of reducing a show’s run time for Fringe conditions, but this production could easily run in two acts. Anthony Banks’ direction dovetails perfectly with the precise, crisp choreography from Arlene Phillips and Richard Roe. Hilarious, quality stuff.
Girlz
Girlz Productions; Jade Studio at Greenside @ George Street
Here is a musical about a girl group – not a new concept – but this show has heart. The cast of seven performers are all great singers and the girls themselves are all marvellous movers. Written by Daf Hughes, the range of songs and musical tone is a triumph. The numbers for Girlz are professionally delivered featuring sharp choreography. The character-led songs away from the girl group numbers are more mellow, more tender in line with the offstage plot lines.
Hot Mess
Birmingham Hippodrome in association with Vicky Graham Productions; Pleasance Two at Pleasance Courtyard
This is one of the hottest tickets in town and it’s easy to see why. A polished, fully theatre ready production that’s funny and challenging in turn. The premise is that Planet Earth (Danielle Steers) has become jaded with her former ‘partners’ from single-cell amoebas to the wonderfully predatory dinosaurs. Steers has an extraordinary voice – her runs and vibrato in the earlier numbers are thrilling. Things take an optimistic turn when she accepts the attention from Hu Mankind (Tobias Turley) when he appears on the scene. Their voices blend beautifully. Ellie Coote (book and direction) and Jack Godfrey (music, lyrics and co-orchestrator) have created a highly polished show here, with support from Birmingham Hippodrome’s New Musical Theatre department. If Hot Mess is a hint of what they can nurture, musical theatre fans will be keeping an eye on the project to see what happens next.
How to Win Against History
Francesca Moody Productions and Bristol Old Vic with Underbelly; Udderbelly at Underbelly, George Square
Within a minute of opening, the audience is wrong-footed by an unexpected entrance and from then on, it’s joy and pazzazz all the way. Each moment is a delight. The through-written musical score is magnificent, full of catchy tunes and witty ingenious lyrics. Blink and you miss the smallest attention to detail. It’s surprises all the way, whether it’s hearing the gorgeous a cappella, delighting at particular pieces of staging, or the whole team bursting into umpteen-part harmonies.
Faultless! An absolute joy!
Nerds
Paul Taylor-Mills; Cowbarn at Underbelly, Bristo Square
Everything about this show just zings quality. The book, the lyrics, the songs (music by Hal Goldberg), the acting, the singing, the choreography, the band… all of it – just top drawer. Sometimes all the elements come together to produce work that’s spectacularly good. This is one of those times.
Ohio
Francesca Moody Productions and piece by piece productions; Upstairs at Assembly Roxy
The songs are terrific, many built through on-the-spot looping (often with the help of the audience), all accompanied by Shaun Bengson’s gentle guitar playing. There are elements of indie-folk, country, sephardic music, overtone singing and something much more primeval. “This show is about death,” said Abigail. Yes, it describes difficulties, like we all have, but ultimately it’s about life, communion, togetherness and joy. Ohio encompasses them all.
The Queen is Mad
Castile Collective Ltd in association with Pinecone Performance Lab; Studio at ZOO Southside
Maria Coyne offers a faultless and controlled vocal performance of high intensity and passion married with precise character portrayal. An incredibly experienced performer, she sustains a strong and compelling presence. She manages to project herself as abused and vulnerable with just a look or a twitch. The desire to rush and save her is strong. Whatever the truth about her mental state, the production succeeds at questioning Joanna’s alleged ‘madness’ in a far more effective way than a narrative history book because the audience is taken on her journey and carried along by the powerfully emotional vocalisations of this amazingly varied high standard show.
World’s Greatest Lover – The New Musical
Broadway International Group; Pleasance One at Pleasance Courtyard
With a stage populated by five very attractive men embodying the world’s greatest lovers, fabulous pop tunes, great singing, dancing and choreography with sound and lighting to match, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing. It’s wonderful. This is SIX for men. From the opening number to the last, the quality of music and performances doesn’t falter. With an excellent on-stage band of three, song after song of the highest quality, performances beyond expectation, this has HIT written all over it. We may not have found the world’s greatest lover, but we just might have found the Fringe’s greatest musical.
Picture credits: Driving in Circles (Scornavacca Photography), Footballers’ Wives (Alex Brenner), Hot Mess (Mark Senior), How to Win Against History (The Other Richard), Nerds (Pamela Raith), Ohio (Mihaela Bodlovic), The Queen is Mad (Earl Echivarre), World’s Greatest Lover (Danny Hidalgo). MTR Best Musical Award graphic: Howard Sherwood.
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