Camden Fringe 2025: Kin-DREAD! – Courtyard Theatre, London

Writer: Harry Metcalfe

Director: Lexie Woodroof

It’s August 1882, and the town of Fughley (pronounced few-ly) is in turmoil, according to a daily paper, read out near the start of Kin-DREAD! The townspeople (“labourers, laundresses, errand boys, … miners”), led by an inspiring revolutionary agitator known as “The Scold”, are mutinying against the ruling Renford family.

It’s clear that this uprising will play some kind of role in the evening’s drama, but the audience has to wait a while to find out how it’s relevant. In the meantime, the Renford family bicker and banter among themselves until one of them is murdered, and the slightly disjointed, single-act play becomes (mostly) a classic closed-room mystery.

Playwright Harry Metcalfe has taken a deerstalker-full of clichés from the whodunnit genre and mashed them up with a lot of sexual innuendo, a few other jokes, and a smattering of social commentary to make an entertaining hour-and-a-half’s farce. Lexie Woodroof’s direction is at its strongest in the stylised set pieces: a musical sting with shocked expressions every time The Scold is mentioned, or the comic re-enactment sections where the actors show their versatility.

Natasha Colenso gives a controlled and nuanced performance as the Renfords’ maid Clara Thorpe, the fixed point in a stormy familial dynamic. She’s a thoughtful foil to Sasha Snowdon’s hilariously vacuous turn as Sophie-Grace Alderton, the new girlfriend of family heir Lawrence (Matt John-Hemmings). Snowdon’s physical comedy (skipping, pirouetting, and giggling with staring eyes, a fixed smile, and hands like a begging dog) provides reliably funny moments in conversational scenes that can flag slightly among the other characters.

The Renford household is packed with humorous caricatures, including Anna Roy as Lawrence’s patrician sister Alison. Her moustache-twirling French husband James LuTaint, played with charmingly persuasive absurdity by Andrew Tuku Jr. Ellis Smith, as the ailing pater familias Lord Sebastian, is aided by parodic butler Earnie (Jonas Feind). Lawrence introduces his best friend Monty (a vigorously disreputable Fred de Soissons) as “the best friend I made before I could develop better judgement”.

The production is boosted by Liz Truscott’s precise and witty sound design. Suitably opulent sets and costumes bolster the faux-Victorian vibe. The play’s aspirations to be both smutty spoof and serious diatribe against inequality sometimes feel as if they are pulling in opposite directions. But the cast make a spirited attempt to reconcile the two currents and are watchably amusing in the process.

Runs until 9 August 2025

Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025