The Creepy Boys have just turned 13 and they’re throwing a party. The pair are planning to spend their time playing weird games, worshipping Satan, and seeing just how far they can push their babysitter. What they don’t expect is to end up weirdly pondering the existential void at the centre of existence. This jittery, frenzied clown comedy from Scantily Glad Theatre aims for anarchic but overshoots into chaotic. It foregrounds the absurd but forgets any semblance of coherence. A shame, given the evident talent of the two performers.
Sam Kruger and S.E. Grummett (‘Grumms’) play the titular twins as E-number-addled hellions turned demonic. Such is the sustained energy levels of the two hyper-animated actors that it makes old joints creak just watching them. As the pair career and bellow their way through a bewildering rush of games, rituals, and flashbacks, it’s easier to process it as anthropomorphised white noise, since trying to actively engage is almost painful. It’s reminiscent of the sheer noise and boisterousness of a live hour of Aunty Donna. It also makes it vert clear that sometimes you just aren’t the intended demographic.
Part of the show’s issue lies with the sound. Neither performer has a microphone, and although the old Victorian room was designed for voices to carry, there is so much dueling dialogue, delivered at tongue-twisting speed, that so much of what the twins are actually saying evaporates into the ether. Gallingly, when things become slightly less breathless (and audible) there are some excellent vignettes, usually coinciding with the twins staying in one place for more than two seconds. The birthing flashback scene is an unfeasibly grotesque and very funny piece of physical comedy and almost-too-evocative mime, calling to mind (niche reference alert, but it is the Fringe after all) Miike Takashi‘s Gozu. There’s also a great running gag of Grumms’ insistence on tryng to switch character to a Nick Riviera-like doctor, much to Sam’s annoyance.
But while it has to be said that both Sam and Grumms are incredibly malleable and versatile physical and vocal performers, they’ve overstretched the show past the point of elasticity. You can throw the finest of ingredients into a blender, but the result will still be soup. It’s easy to admire the technique and skill on display, but still be left cold by the product. On that level, watching Creepy Boys is like listening to a prog rock concept album, or watching dressage. Perhaps the performers have put so much of themselves into the show that they can’t bring themselves to do what Mama Creepy should have done, and kill their darlings. The show has existed in some form or another for a few years now, and appears to have been constantly added to, rather than honed.
To be completely fair to the actually obscenely talented duo, the vast majority of the crowd appear to be on board with the mayhem, especially when the play ends (somehow) on a celebratory dance to ur-emo anthem ‘Welcome to the Black Parade‘. And in that moment it did tap into some hitherto lesser-spotted poignancy, and provoke perhaps the first ever instance of phantom fringe syndrome. It’s just that the emotional core that is there is is as smothered as the pea in the princess’ bed to be almost invisible.
Creepy Boys runs until Sun 27 Aug 2023 at Summerhall – Demonstration Room at 22:00
Comments