Fringe chief says ‘I do’ and venue springs up in old registry office

IT HAS lain empty for years since the curtain came down on its role as Edinburgh’s main registry office. But now India Buildings, tucked away in Victoria Street, has become home to what is being billed as “the world’s biggest pop-up theatre”.

Fringe promoters, hope to stage shows there after carrying out a dramatic makeover that has created eight theatres and four cafe-bars inside the listed landmark. With a £40,000 price tag, the transformation by C Venues has been carried out at a fraction of the £500,000 cost of the Edinburgh International Festival’s conversion of the Royal Highland Showground at Ingliston.

Hartley Kemp, artistic director of C Venues, said he had flown from Australia to the UK for three days to clinch a deal with RBS to take on the building for the festival.

He said: “There is nothing like this anywhere on the Fringe. There are all kinds of amazing spaces inside the building and our stage manager has worked out that if you laid all of them flat on the ground, they would take up more space than Trafalgar Square.”