12/08/26

Summerhall, Red Lecture Theatre

Do you believe in ghosts?

Kirsty Mann opens Corpse with that very question and asks the audience to vote one way or the other by raising a hand. I am one of several people who vote ‘no’ without hesitation, even though I’ve published plenty of supernatural fiction over the years, and even won the Scottish Children’s Book Award for The Piper. But do I actually believe in ghosts? Nah.

Mann assures us that what she is about to tell us is a true story, something that recently happened to her. She informs us she’s a doctor – and yes, that’s easy to check; she has long led a double life, working in the NHS as well as doing comedy. Now she wants to tell us about the time when she and her husband, Mark, are thinking about starting a family, but can’t because they are living in a tiny one-room flat in London. She sees this house advertised: a big three-bedroom affair with stairs and everything… and, because it is in such a terrible state of repair, the two of them can just about to afford to buy it.

Okay, so the old woman who owned the house has recently died, and the woman’s sister still lives next door and has a strange habit of standing in the garden at night, eating the apples from an old tree, but… a foot on the property ladder, right? A step up! It’s not to be sneezed at.

So they buy the house.

The set couldn’t be simpler: an old double bed, a heap of assorted junk in the corner and some distinctly dodgy-looking paintings, purportedly the work of the house’s late owner. But Mann doesn’t need a complex set; she’s a fabulous storyteller, taking us through her early days in her new home, the different people she encounters, the strange discoveries she makes. She coaxes laughter from the odd little things that happen to her as she tries to adapt to the unfamiliar environment – but steadily, unsettlingly, her experiences become more and more unnerving, so that all those easy laughs increasingly become interspersed with moments of absolute dread.

I can see how Mann is doing it, of course: simple lighting and sound effects, perfectly-timed jump scares. But somehow, along with everybody else in the packed room, I’m flinching at every new twist. My heartbeat is raised and, on a couple of occasions, it’s all I can do not to jump right out of my seat.

It would be criminal to give any more away. Suffice to say that Corpse is a highly effective piece of storytelling masterfully delivered. It achieves the almost impossible, a perfect blend of laughter and screams. A comedy of terrors, if you will.

And it works like gangbusters.

So, let me ask you a question. Do you believe in ghosts?

5 stars

Philip Caveney