Succubus – Courtyard Theatre, London.

Writer: Georgina Collins

Director: Grainne Robson

Ready for Halloween, Georgina Collins brings her comedy flesh-fest to the Courtyard Theatre. A young girl discovers her appetite for sensation, stimulation, and satiation. She makes daily trips to the butchers to purchase socially acceptable offal for a houseful of mythical hounds, but the shop-bought meat ceases to be enough. Her awakened appetites lead her on to the rarer pleasures of hunted flesh.

Dating sites introduce her to a range of appalling men who improve the universe by becoming snacks, and things go on from there. Discretion is an early victim. She finds a friend to make up a small pack, learns to choose more wisely from the men menu, and arrives at the tipping point for all monsters, when the villagers get together and start their own hunt with pitchforks and torches. Such is the fate of the contemporary demon. The pleasure lies in watching her progress, and in the fun she has getting there.

Georgina Colins, the actor and the creator of this piece, remains perky and innocent-ish throughout; there are some well-placed gobbets of victim for her to nibble, the gore is introduced with surprising tastefulness, and it is a small, satisfying, excellently paced horror story. The nods to less outré social norms are funny and apposite, and the jokes land. Possibly the biggest criticism might be that the normalised and quippy hunting scenes lack adrenalised jump scares and are light on ickiness, though for many of us that’s a good thing. It isn’t a demanding piece of theatre, but it is expertly contrived and makes for a fun outing.

This is a fast-paced, seasonally appropriate, well-written, dynamically directed, tiny jewel of theatre that gives its audience gasps and grins, but doesn’t make anyone hurt their brains by thinking too much.

Runs until 28 October 2026