Kirsty Mann: Corpse – Summerhall

Summerhall’s Red Lecture Theatre is a particularly appropriate home for Corpse. I always find it a slightly creepy, intimate space, graced with comfortable, nicely raked seating that focuses attention firmly on the stage. There is something about the slightly institutional atmosphere of this lecture theatre that also feels rather well suited to the ghost story that is about to unfold.

And Corpse begins with a premise almost too good to resist. Kirsty Mann is a real life doctor, a rational, scientifically minded woman who, with her husband, buys a surprisingly cheap house in an area of London where they had never expected to be able to afford one. Immediately, alarm bells ring. Why is it so cheap?

Then strange things start happening.

Mann herself references The Amityville Horror, and there is something delicious about the prospect of a doctor confronting what appears to be a real-life haunted house. I wanted her to approach it forensically, interrogating the evidence and perhaps surprising us with what she discovered. Instead, Corpse increasingly takes the road towards comedy.

That creates a problem. It isn’t consistently funny enough to work entirely as comedy, yet it isn’t serious or forensic enough to become a compelling examination of a possible haunting. Caught somewhere between the two, it rather reduces its own punching power.

There are a few jump scares along the way, none of which I am going to spoil, and Mann is certainly an engaging and confident performer. But some of the comic diversions simply frustrated me. At times I found myself wondering exactly what sort of show Corpse wanted to be. I kept wishing Mann would play this extraordinary central story considerably straighter and allow its inherent strangeness to do more of the work.

Ironically, the spookiest moment of the evening appears to be completely accidental. Mann is talking about an unsettling painting that came with the house when, at precisely the right moment, the painting itself falls over. She acknowledges it and suggests that strange things like this have been happening during performances throughout the run.

Coincidence, a freak gust of wind or something else entirely, it is properly spooky.

And perhaps that is the ghostly joke at the heart of Corpse. For all the deliberately constructed scares, its most convincing supernatural moment is apparently the one nobody planned.

Despite my reservations there is no denying that this is a highly entertaining show and Mann is a natural performer with great comic timing and even if I prefer properly spooky to jolly jape there can be a place for both.

Playing until August 31^st 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026KIRSTYM

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 23rd August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:

Running time – 1hr