CEILIDH
Shoreditch Town Hall
★★★★★
“Here on the dance floor, we come to know what it is to be fully alive”
Ceilidh deserves ten stars out of five. It is wonderful. This new musical by Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie is the perfect antidote to the twin epidemics of our age: loneliness and anxiety. Isolation engenders fear of others. Ceilidh is the cure. It works by encouraging the very interaction most theatre forbids. Strangers get out of their seats and hold hands, becoming one with the music and each other. After such a night, one’s faith in the simple goodwill of humanity is restored.
The story follows a family of callers, the people who teach the steps and keep a ceilidh from collapsing into chaos. Gilmour himself plays our narrator, the son and heir to the family calling, Ramsay. The show dances through the great Scottish traditions where ceilidhs belong: Burns Night, Hogmanay, weddings. At every excuse, the audience is invited onto the dance floor. Nobody is forced, but almost everybody goes. Drams of whisky are handed round mid-show, which helps. By the second half, the line between cast and audience has all but vanished. Making music together is a transcendent experience, and all too rare in modern city life. Here on the dance floor, we come to know what it is to be fully alive. We are not here merely as consumers or observers, but as participants and creators. One can sense the desperate, mass hunger for such experiences.
Director and choreographer Sam Pinkleton, fresh from the Broadway hit Oh, Mary!, understands that the real spectacle here is the crowd. Shoreditch Town Hall’s grand old hall becomes the village hall of everyone’s memory (set by Rachel Hauck, lighting by Isabella Byrd, costumes by Sarah Laux, sound by Danny Erdberg and Ursula Kwong-Brown). The production began at Pitlochry under Alan Cumming’s artistic directorship and played to sell-out houses in Baltimore. It’s easy to see why.
What Ceilidh has that most modern musicals don’t is really hummable tunes that stay with you. Gilmour and McKenzie’s songs sit comfortably alongside traditional Scottish melodies and dances passed down through generations, adapted for the show by the creative team (orchestrations by Claire McKenzie, music supervision by Kris Kukul). A tight band led by musical director Shonagh Murray on keys (Isis Dunthorne on drums, Maddy Salter on guitar, Johnny Mayers on bass) drives the evening. It is a splendid display of the vast, rich tradition of Scottish music.
Scottish ceilidhs are the human riposte to lockdown and to everything it left behind. Lord of the Dance and Riverdance took Irish dance to the world. I hope Ceilidh also becomes a global phenomenon. It deserves to. After London, the show continues to tour the UK. Go, wear comfortable shoes, and accept the dram.
At the end, the whole room stands in a circle, joins hands and sings Auld Lang Syne. Strangers who walked in alone sing “we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet” together. It is very moving. I wish them all the luck in the world.
CEILIDH
Shoreditch Town Hall then UK Tour continues
Reviewed on 29th October 2026
by Elizabeth Botsford
Photography by Luke Dyson
