Kirsty Mann: Corpse ★★★★★

Kirsty Mann isn’t the type one normally associates with ghost stories. Chipper and charming, she’s a doctor and comedian who spends her life either healing people or making them laugh. Freddy Krueger she ain’t, and that she effectively makes her audience giggle and scream — in Summerhall’s Red Lecture Room, of all places — is a testament to the wily construction of her hugely entertaining show, Kirsty Mann: Corpse.

Do you believe in ghosts? Mann, a woman of science, does now, but she didn’t before she and her husband bought a haunted house last year in East London. The price was right, possibly because the prior owner, who’d just died the month prior, had been in the house for decades and hadn’t been able to maintain the upkeep in her latter years. And it’s not just dirty and broken down. Weird paintings came with the house — a cellist with no eyes, a deranged-looking dog with wriggling prey in its mouth — and there’s a chair lift that seems to move up and down stairs on its own.

It’s when the toilets start flushing themselves and the taps begin turning on at weird moments that Mann suspects she might not be alone. Her husband is working crazy hours and is rarely at home, and she’s not randomly visiting the loos to test the waters, so who is?

To say much more would spoil the fun and lessen the impact of what ensues. Mann has constructed a solid, clever show, director Joseph Hancock keeps the tension tight, and together they manage to surprise at many an unexpected moment. Major props also to Max Pappenheim for his superlative sound design; his bumps cause jumps.