When the world’s biggest theatre festival takes over reputedly the world’s most haunted city, you’d rightly expect a thespian-fortean love-in. Indeed, in the 75th year of the Edinburgh Fringe, every other production flyer littering the Royal Mile promises to be a spooky, sinister or surreal affair. From Japanese puppet show Space Hippo, to numerous plays involving séances, not to mention a ballet version of Hamlet starring Ian McKellen, the ghostly, the bizarre and the occult are not only out of the closet here, but ominously tap dancing while howling show tunes. The Fringe’s lack of an official selection committee for choosing performers and productions has made it an unfettered breeding ground for the weird, dark and often wonderful. Want to stage a Mongolian Death Worm musical with finger puppets? Or perhaps an X-Files meets Bullseye opera crossover? This is the place.
sees a medium summon the spirit of the eponymous feminist pioneer who ran is a vintage haunted house farce, takes 1950s EC comics as its ghastly reference point, and explores the curious circumstances of Edgar Allan Poe’s demise.