One Man Poe returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for its biggest year yet.
Following sell-out runs in 2024 and 2025, and after winning both the Derek Award for Best Overall Show and the Spookies Award for Best Horror Solo Show, actor and director Stephen Smith expands his acclaimed solo celebration of Edgar Allan Poe to six stories across three separate productions.
Performed entirely from memory using nearly 19,000 words of Poe’s original text, the cycle presents some of the author’s most famous works alongside two rarely performed tales making their Fringe debut.
Audiences can experience:
- The Tell-Tale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum
- The Black Cat and The Raven
- The Business Man and The Case of M. Valdemar
The latter introduces two strikingly different sides of Poe. The Business Man is a darkly comic account of greed, opportunism and self-invention, while The Case of M. Valdemar explores one of Poe’s most chilling concepts: a scientific experiment conducted at the very moment of death.
Presented in the atmospheric surroundings of Greenside’s historic Riddles Court, One Man Poe combines faithful storytelling, theatrical transformation and Gothic atmosphere to bring Poe’s words vividly to life.
The production has toured extensively throughout the UK and internationally, including performances in New York, Baltimore, Dubai and Malaysia. It has been praised by critics and audiences alike, with even Poe’s descendants describing Smith’s work as a “tour-de-force”.
Whether discovering Poe for the first time or returning to revisit old favourites, audiences have the opportunity to experience all six stories across 42 performances during the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe.
