PLANETARIUM LATES: PINK FLOYD’S DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★★★★
“it really is a hidden gem of the fringe”
Planetarium Lates: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is an experience well worth the walk to Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth space museum. The 45-minute show pairs a play-through of the renowned concept album with soaring visuals of planets, shuttles and satellites on the planetarium’s dome-shaped screen overhead. It’s an experience that feels worthy of one of progressive rock’s most iconic albums.
If you’re looking for a blissed-out break from the business of The Mile, you’re not alone- all of the Planetarium’s cinema-style seating was full, and drinks from the bar are also permitted inside. That being said, I would refrain from heavy drinking before the show – and the venue staff give fair warning – certain graphics, and the immersive nature of the planetarium itself can cause nausea- and there are some fast spinning visuals that can cause a bit of dizziness if you’re too well lubricated.
The show begins with three of the album cover’s iconic prisms looming overhead, as the ‘Speak To Me’ overture plays, before collapsing into ‘Breathe (In The Air)’ and we begin floating through space, past winking stars, planets and their asteroid belts. We see celestial visuals reflected in the helmet of an astronaut, who blinks back at us as they float in space. Later, planets swoop and spin above the rows of tilted seating, and a pockmarked moon rears up to the transcendent wailing of ‘The Great Gig In The Sky.’
A personal favourite visual was an Orrey- a model solar system – ticking away above, with each mechanical planet looped by its own satellite of shuttle, powered by whirring cogs below. In another instant, we see a space shuttle penetrate the earth’s atmosphere, detaching and reattaching, disappearing deeper into space before a pod comes roaring back through the atmosphere and towards the ocean.
Also particularly effective, set to the percussive counting machine, falling change and tangy bassline of ‘Money’, we breeze past television screens displaying cascading coins, conveyor belts and poverty-stricken visuals from the original music video, a stark reminder of society’s lifeblood back on earth. As ‘Any Colour You Like’ strikes a different tone, we see different coloured, luminescent organisms gently pulse through a hazy atmosphere like jellyfish.
The venue staff recommended sitting in the middle or the back rows of the planetarium’s seating, and I did find that sitting at the front, with the dome’s cutoff within my line of sight, did affect immersion somewhat, so I’d recommend getting there early for the best seating. Regardless, it really is a hidden gem of the fringe, and well worth a slightly stiff neck. Just prepare to come crashing back down to earth once it’s over.
PLANETARIUM LATES: PINK FLOYD’S DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Reviewed on 15th August 2025 at Planetarium at Dynamic Earth
by Emily Lipscombe
