Writers: Michael Clarke, James Gault and Ed Jones
Director: Jon Brittain
Entering the main stage of the Soho Theatre, the scene draped in pastel tie-dye cloth is reminiscent of a house in mourning, and you can make out a few lamps and some vague furniture shapes. Meanwhile, obnoxiously loud ambient music, featuring some sleazy electric organ and 80s beats, pounds your ears. The ambivalence is striking, and, as the music stops abruptly, we are left in the pitch-black of the theatre: the tone is perfectly set for the chaos that lies ahead.
The story itself is complicated, if not confusing, starting with a flashback where we meet one of our main characters, Holland (Michael Clarke), who is working with his partner Barret (Ed Jones) as police-priests investigating a haunting. Barret dies, shot by his partner, who mistakes him for a look-alike demon (James Gault). This leaves Holland heartbroken and broke, now forced to host immersive stag parties and even sell the letters of his name to make ends meet. Recruited by a police-priest officer to host a stag, Holland finds himself inadvertently investigating another haunted house, where everything is not as it seems.
The three members of the Crybabies team (Clarke, Jones and Gault), who have both written the show and act in it, are funny and their skills are impressive – constantly multiroling, switching between accents, ages, and social class while making it easy to follow along in the debauchery, despite the complex and ridiculous layers of storytelling. Directed by Jon Brittain, the three actors are almost constantly on stage or in movement, either actively shifting between roles or adding other elements to the scene. The perfectly timed sound design by Ed Lewis, as well as the changes in speaker amplification, plays into the tropes just enough for us to catch subtle movie references, while the illusions (John Bulleid) bring additional giddy joy to the show.
This is not your typical fringe theatre. Here we have smoke machines, puppets and blow-up dolls, creating an unexpected awe factor. It’s Ghostbusters on crack, or a staged take on Scary Movie. The Scaring is riddled with so many puns that the façade of a story falters at times, and some of the jokes may or may not land with certain audience members. This show is definitely more to some tastes than others: sometimes messy, constantly absurd, but enjoyably hilarious.
Runs until 23 September 2026
