Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit by power cut on opening day

Venues were left without electricity for about two hours or more as power workers tried to restore supplies.

The power outage came on the opening day of the Fringe | Getty Images

SP Energy Networks posted on social media around 5pm that the outage was affecting EH1, EH8, EH9, EH10 and EH16 postcode areas and said: “We’re working to get your electricity supply back on as soon as we can.”

Edinburgh Festival Fringe tweeted: “There's a power outage in some city centre postcodes at the moment, which may be affecting some #edfringe venues - if you're an affected venue and you see this, add a reply so we can let people know.”

Someone posted saying: “Not a venue myself but @ThePleasance Dome and @FollowTheCow Bristo Square both seem to have emptied their buildings.”

Another post read: “Festival theatre was out but we appear to have power back, just checking systems.”

And around 6pm, another asked: “Any updates? Pleasance and underbelly shows cancelled earlier.”

Just the Tonic later said its Nucleus venue in the Old Town had been affected by the blackout.  Founder Darrell Martin said:  "The perseverance of the performers reflected the true spirit of Just the Tonic - LA magician Jordon Rooke performed his show 6 Impossible Things in the dark to a packed audience.  He performed the impossible - a magic show in the dark- the show must go on! "   When SP Energy Networks posted around 7pm that power supplies had been restored, it added EH3, EH6 and EH13 to the list of areas affected, though it is thought only parts of each post code area lost power.