Edgar in the Red Room at Hope Theatre

A dark, twisted tale of madness opens at the Hope Theatre, populated with upbeat songs and a smattering of jokes.

After sold-out houses in the USA and Canada, Edgar in the Red Room makes its way to London for two weeks only, feeling right at home in a small, black room above an old pub as the dark of winter sets in all around.

The show is like a strange but wondrous hallucination, diving into the mind of Edgar Allen Poe, his life, his writings and ultimately his death.

Edgar sets about writing a short story. His protagonist, himself, goes to visit his old friend Roderick Usher. While there, he comes face-to-face with the ghoulish past of the Usher family as well as his own failings, grief and madness. Roderick tells Edgar horrific stories while a ghostly figure in white scratches at his door. Finally, Roderick and Edgar attempt to escape, but not without first running through the Red Room.

This new story is stitched together from the entrails of Poe’s various works. Most notably, his short stories, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, form the meat of the narrative. His poems, meanwhile, such as Berenice and, of course, The Raven, haunt proceedings.

It may sound bleak, but the show deftly weaves humour throughout, and the cast occasionally bursts into song, wielding a chorus of powerful voices. It’s all an inescapable fitful delirium.

Edgar in the Red Room may be a small-scale production, but it has big ambitions. And it realises those ambitions with a script that could not be any tighter, gorgeous shadow work and a raven costume that is absolutely to die for.

This is one of those small gems that demonstrates how fringe theatre can be so special. The entire theatre may be smaller than your bedroom – there may only be 30 seats – but you’ll come away feeling like you just saw something big.