The premise of One Day carries an inherently theatrical idea: a single date revisited again and again as lives stretch, fracture and reconnect across decades. Translating that delicate narrative device to the stage is no small undertaking, yet the world-premiere musical adaptation at the Royal Lyceum Theatre meets the challenge with confidence, intimacy and emotional precision.
Based on David Nicholls’ much-loved novel, the story begins in Edinburgh in 1988. The narrative is directly inspired by a passage in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, reflecting on fate, coincidence, and the significance of specific, ‘sly and unseen’ days in a person's life.
On the night of their graduation, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew stumble into one another’s orbit, a brief encounter that quietly alters the course of both their lives. What follows is an unfolding portrait told through annual glimpses on the same date — St Swithin’s Day — tracing twenty years of friendship, frustration and the complicated gravity that keeps drawing them back together.
It’s a structure that could easily fragment on stage, yet David Greig’s crisp adaptation and Max Webster’s slick direction, embraces its episodic rhythm. Each scene arrives like a postcard from another year: a colourful snapshot and often loaded with emotional residue from everything that has happened in between. A surtitle digital marker quietly ticks forward through the years. The result is a theatrical mosaic rather than a linear romance, as the couple embark on their new careers, sometimes together, often apart.
The Lyceum has been imaginatively transformed into an arena with seating around a revolving, raised stage with great sight lines from stalls to circle. The set design is also economical, neatly conjuring bars and bedrooms to Arthur’s Seat, while lighting captures time passing with cinematic assurance.
At the centre of everything are the two performances upon which the entire production rests. Jamie Muscato exudes ‘Hugh Grant’ careless charm and privilege as Dexter, a polished public-school chap, drifting into the chaos of 1990s celebrity culture. With fame comes an air of arrogance yet reveals a simmering vulnerability beneath the bravado.
As a working-class girl from Leeds, Emma is socially his polar opposite, bright, bubbly with grounded intelligence. Sharon Rose captures her witty, wise, restless personality, determined to change the world while negotiating the compromises of adulthood. Her passion for sharing ideas from literature is sprinkled through her conversations, with references to Woolf, Hardy, Beckett, Scott Fitzgerald, who inspire her dream to be a writer.
Musically, the score by Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez favours emotional clarity and nuance over show-stopping spectacle. Positioned in gallery boxes above the stage, the live band perform within the theatrical landscape rather than hidden in a pit.
The songs illuminate the characters’ feelings from joy to despair, leaning towards reflective, folk-tinged, bluesy melodies. Emma’s solo rendition of “Blackbirds”, sung after her first evening with Dexter, is deliciously poetic, Rose’s rich, raspy, soulful voice, reminiscent of Alexandra Burke with the X factor.
Muscato’s smooth velvety tone of his vocals carry an effortless potent poignancy, especially when his confidence begins to fracture, such as in “Pick up, Em” and other tear-jerking ballads.
This is in essence, a rom-dram-com, a play with songs, reminiscent of two recent shows performed at the Traverse, ‘Midsummer’ (David Greig) and ‘The History of Paper’ (Oliver Emanuel).
As this is not a razzle dazzle, tap dancing musical, curious choreographic sequences with members of the ensemble swirling in circles around the actors, are unexpected. The aim perhaps is to echo the motif of lives orbiting one another across time, but the dance moves are often clumsy and interrupts, rather than enhances, the dramatic mood.
Around Dexter and Emma, is a circulating swarm of student friends, family and passing acquaintances constantly intersecting and diverging until the next 15th July. Josefina Gabrielle brings warmth to Dexter’s mother Alison, while David Birrell’s quietly dignified father provides one of the play’s most moving threads.
If the show occasionally feels dense with incident, - a swift race through two decades – the shifting, emotional through-line remains remarkably strong, lightened by a flow of quick fire jokes and lively humour. What emerges is less a conventional love story than a meditation on timing, missed opportunities and the quiet persistence of connection.
Whether you have read the novel or seen the film or TV series, this stage adaptation still lands with a dramatic force that feels freshly devastating. Greig wisely resists softening the story’s rough edges, allowing Emma and Dexter to remain imperfect, often frustrating and unmistakably human. By the end of Act 2, the audience sits in a silent hush, a shared atmosphere, absorbed by a heartfelt story which has truly found its mark.
Because One Day reminds us, with disarming honesty, that a lifetime can change everything — and sometimes the most important day of your life is simply the one you didn’t realise you were living.
Showtimes:
27 February – 19 April, 2026
Tickets from £25 (concessions available)
Age: 12+
https://lyceum.org.uk/events/one-day#dates-and-times