Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Houdini Speaks to the Living
Hidden Room Theatre
Genre: Theatre
Venue: The space on the Mile
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
It’s 1924 and Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are sharing a stage. In one corner there is Doyle who believes in spiritualism so much that he is willing to base his reputation upon it. In the other corner Houdini who as somebody who understands the black arts more than most is completely against spiritualism touring the country to expose mediums as frauds. What ensues is an argument between them which eventually leads to Doyle refusing to speak to Houdini ever again.
Review
Hidden Room Theatre present from writer-director Beth Burns and writer-magician Patrick Terry, a well-trodden pathway, though as it is well trodden, a popular and fascinating one.
This is a well-known disagreement between two strong friends that ended badly.
For me, the ending came when Conan Doyle’s widow held a séance in a London theatre after his death where only one person failed to turn up. That’s right, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, thus proving to many that spiritualism itself was a fraud. Therefore, this is ripe for theatricality.
Here we get a decent performance with sufficient dexterity in the magic to make it work well.
The writing keeps the feeling of the 1920s with arguments delivered with deference and people being suitably aghast rather than hurt and triggered.
The acting does convince though at times it felt a little under-rehearsed, but we got the characters of each strongly created. Costume helped a great deal. The stage was used well.
The various set pieces from the levitating table, the ringing of the bell, leading to the photographs was deftly delivered.
The shock that Doyle believed that his great friend was holding something back from him, a connection to his son that a medium could bring forth because he thought Houdini was a medium cruelly denying him access to his long-lost child exploded as it should do. We all felt the despair of Houdini who refused to accept he had such a gift but his refusal to show his friend how each trick was done cost dearly.
Technically, everything worked. The set was as it needed to be, the costume made the characters in so many ways that there was very little by lighting or sound that was required. It was nice to see that there had been the co-opting of a member of The Space staff to start the whole thing on before Houdini came back to finish the whole thing off with the lights.
Houdini Speaks to the Living is a good piece of theatre that I enjoyed at the end of the day. With the dexterity on show with the magic and drama that unfolds between these two titans of entertainment in the early part of the 20th century it is a story that is well worth telling and Hidden Room Theatre, tell it well.
