Review: Ghost Light | Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 - Young Pleasance
- Lisa in the theatre
- Aug 9
- 3 min read
Pleasance Theatre's award-winning young company for performers aged 16-21 has produced original shows for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe since 1995. Celebrating 30 years of giving young people professional theatre opportunities at the Fringe, Young Pleasance this year presents Ghost Light at the Pleasance Courtyard from 31st July - 10th August.
Young Pleasance, Ghost Light ★★★★☆
review: 7 August 2025 | Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Theatres are fascinating places. I've always been attracted to the dark tales and curious histories that surround some of our oldest and most beloved performing spaces.
Theatres have stood on the location that is now home to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in the heart of London's West End since 1663. With a rich history of fires, scandals and of course rumours of multiple ghosts, it's the oldest theatre site in London that's still in use today, and the perfect setting for a spooky play.
In Ghost Light, by Young Pleasance, we meet Izzy as she arrives at the modern day Theatre Royal Drury Lane to begin work as a junior wardrobe assistant. Sent backstage to find old costumes in storage rooms at the top the building, Izzy immediately feels uneasy in the dark corners of the theatre. As Izzy unpacks beautiful antique outfits, the ghosts of their former wearers begin to appear.
This is such a rich, ambitious concept for a play. The legend of the ghost light itself is bewitching: a single bulb left illuminated in a cage or on a stand, near the centre of the stage when the theatre is empty. But is a theatre ever empty? Do the spirits that haunt our theatres ever rest? Or are they hanging about hoping to tread the boards one last time?
Full of intrigue and imaginative storytelling, Joanna Billington and Will Feasey's original book for Ghost Light pays homage to real legends connected to, or said to haunt, the Drury Lane, such as Joseph Grimaldi and Nell Gwyn, but it also celebrates modern theatre by including ingenious hints to works staged at the venue such as A Chorus Line, Oklahoma and even Miss Saigon. Hauntings and spooky mysteries may be at the heart of Ghost Light, but this original new work is really a love letter to theatre past and present.
We are reminded that the play is set in present day when a team of YouTube Ghost hunters arrive at Drury Lane to investigate what is often called "the world's most haunted theatre." It's intelligent writing that artfully weaves together narrative threads to produce a meta 'theatre within a theatre' story that's full of history and intrigue.
There are a lot of performers in the Young Pleasance company and we don't always have the time to fully appreciate all of the characters they are playing, but the performances are universally impressive. Richard House's atmospheric lighting creates the perfect eerie ambiance for this play and beautifully showcases the intricate period costumes, wigs and makeup worm by the cast.
Perfect for theatre lovers, ghost hunters or anyone interested in history, Ghost Light celebrates the colourful characters and unseen backstage workers whose spirits keep theatres alive, even when they are seemingly empty. ★★★★☆
Ghost Light at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025
Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance One
15:50, 70 mins
Ages 8+
From £11.00 https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/ghost-light
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