The Yellow Wallpaper- Image Credit: Jacob Hiss
By Grace Hatchell
Now then, I don’t usually make a habit of staring too closely at wallpaper. Mainly because once you start noticing the dodgy joins, the bubbles, and the bit your dad swore he’d “sort next weekend” in 2008, you can never unsee it.
But The Yellow Wallpaper is a different matter entirely.
This critically acclaimed dance-theatre thriller is heading to Edinburgh Fringe 2026, bringing with it a blend of contemporary dance, theatrical storytelling, psychological horror, and the sort of creeping tension that makes you check the corners of the room before putting the kettle on.
The production will run at Lime Studio at Greenside @ George Street at 4.05pm from Friday 7th to Saturday 29th August, excluding 16th and 23rd August. So if you’re Fringe-bound, pop that in your diary, underline it, circle it, and maybe don’t decorate your hotel room in yellow beforehand.
Based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous short story, The Yellow Wallpaper follows Jane, a woman undergoing treatment for what was once called “female hysteria.” She is confined to a room, forbidden from socialising, reading, or writing, and left with little more than the wallpaper to occupy her mind.
Which, frankly, sounds like a punishment invented by someone who has never been left alone with their own thoughts and a questionable interior design choice.
As the weeks pass, Jane becomes increasingly fixated on the wallpaper’s patterns. What begins as observation slowly twists into horror, as she becomes convinced there are women trapped within it. Her quiet watching becomes a desperate mission to set them free.
First published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper caused a stir and sparked early conversations around women’s healthcare, bodily autonomy, and the ways control can be dressed up as care. This new adaptation brings those ideas into a contemporary light, exploring medical misogyny, marriage, confinement, and resistance.
And yes, it may be set around wallpaper, but don’t be fooled. This is not a soft furnishings seminar with a dramatic lighting budget. This sounds like a proper psychological thriller with movement in its bones.
Directed and choreographed by Caitlin Ort, the production fuses dance, text, and theatrical storytelling to create what promises to be a visceral and immersive experience. It has already enjoyed previous sold-out runs and development in New York, and now arrives at the Edinburgh Fringe with newly developed sequences and a heightened sense of gothic horror.
The show features Broadway performer Megan Ort in the central role of Jane. Megan’s credits include Sweeney Todd and Cats, so she’s no stranger to bringing big theatrical energy to the stage. Here, she leads a cast in what sounds like a physically and emotionally demanding performance — the kind where you leave the theatre blinking into the daylight and wondering whether your own curtains have been judging you.
The wider company includes Morgan Blanchard, Paloma D’Auria, Olivia Helaine, Maya Musial, Matt Pappadia, Annie Sherman, and Claire van Bever, with producer Sari Stifelman, a Tony-nominated producer known for championing bold, female-driven work.
That’s the thing that makes this one particularly interesting. The Yellow Wallpaper is not just a horror story. It is a story about being dismissed. About being told what is best for you by people who are not listening. About the strange and frightening places the mind can go when someone is trapped, silenced, and watched over in the name of “care.”
And honestly, there is something very Fringe about that. Not in a jazz-hands-and-flyers-in-the-rain kind of way, but in the sense that the Fringe often gives space to work that digs under the skin. The sort of work that doesn’t just entertain you, but follows you down the street afterwards like a ghost with excellent posture.
The Front Row Centre praised the performers as “marvelous,” adding that Caitlin Ort creates a piece whose ending “will take your breath away.” Dance Informa described The Yellow Wallpaper as “a pertinent reminder that sometimes we must let go of something in order to grow.”
So there we are. A gothic dance-theatre thriller, a classic story reframed for today, and one very suspicious room of wallpaper.
I’ll be honest with you, villagers: if I walk into Lime Studio and see so much as a patterned wall, I’ll be clutching my satchel like it owes me rent.
The Yellow Wallpaper plays at Lime Studio at Greenside @ George Street at 4.05pm from Friday 7th to Saturday 29th August 2026, excluding 16th and 23rd August. The running time is 60 minutes.
You can find more from the production on Instagram at @theyellowwallpaperplay.
The Yellow Wallpaper | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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