Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Comedian and NHS doctor Kirsty Mann did not believe in ghosts – at least not until she and her husband bought a house in East London and found it was definitely haunted.

The Victorian property was suspiciously cheap and on the market because of the death of its former owner, but they snapped it up – old lady's junk and nightmarish artwork included. After moving in, the couple could not shake the feeling of creepiness, with toilets that flushed on their own, scratch marks on the woodwork, and a stairlift that never stayed in one place.

What initially follows from this setup is a fairly standard ghost story – to the extent that Mann has to acknowledge similarities to the tales of hauntings in Amityville, Long Island, following violent deaths.

The story has no shortage of jump scares that terrify our home-alone narrator, and the audience, only to turn out to have rational explanations. She has the comedian’s impulse to build the tension then shatter it with a gag, even if it comes at the cost of undermining the spine-tingling intent and risking a certain narrative predictability. 

But when it comes down to the sharper end, when reason is harder to come by, Mann chooses chills over laughs. It means that in its entirety Corpse is only occasionally funny, but that’s probably as it should be. It’s mostly not truly scary, either, which is more of an issue, though the story is more than captivating enough to keep you transfixed.

It also helps that Mann is a beguiling first-person storyteller, casual enough to engage us at a cordial level, but with the gravitas to have the audience lean in to each twist and turn. She also boasts an understated physicality, which is crucial in revealing her ever-increasing terror, and strong character work (with decent accents, despite her protestations to the contrary) to bring the characters to life.

Well, not June, the ex owner. She’s dead. But we do meet her carer and her magnificently dotty sister, who lives a couple of doors down and drip-feeds plot-crucial information about what happened in the cursed house.

An interesting strand is how much the spooky activity is in Mann’s stress- and sleep-deprived mind as an overworked hospital medic, while questions are raised, but not examined in too much depth, about doctors’ casual attitudes to death and cadavers. 

Overall, Corpse is a solid piece of storytelling, probably neither strong enough in comedy nor original enough in horror for hardcore fans of either genre, but nonetheless an intriguing hour.

Review date: 18 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Summerhall