Horror plays may be a growing genre in the West End but they are pretty slim pickings on the Fringe. So it’s interesting to see if the small space at Underbelly Cowgate will rise our hackles. It’s from the fecund Soho Theatre stable that’s having a right good Fringe this year and Indigo Productions put their trust in the hands of Patrick McPherson, who’s also presenting two comedy/stand up shows this year, to deliver the goods.

To a sold out audience we enter a darkly lit theatre. Ivy is growing out of a single armchair sat centre stage. It’s the death place of Tom’s alcoholic, bullying father who has been estranged from Tom and his brother, Lewis, for over three years. The smell in the flat has alerted a neighbour to call the police and now Tom and Lewis (two very different personalities) have to deal with the situation. The ‘situation’, upon their father’s instructions, is to  scatter his ashes in a tiny Welsh village.

The tale wouldn’t work without an excellent technical back up.  An accomplished foley artist has been hard at work creating a soundtrack of plot-critical effects.

Lewis is a credible character presented through a succession of mobile phone voice notes.  His girlfriend Ellie crops up and a number of short recording of meetings with his therapist are played out.  But the critical factor in the retelling of this folk horror tale is the infrequent, but extremely loud, blasts of noise and blinding light that are effectively used as jump scares.

The storyline itself may be an adaptation of the internet-spawned phenomenon, the Slender Man, it centres on the presence of an underground entity called The Stretched Man who was drowned in a flood in the village in which we now find ourselves.  It haunts its victims from generation to generation, a bit like the construct of It Follows but with a visual style that brings to mind The Blair With Project.

It’s a great story, well told, convincingly portrayed by McPherson and expertly delivered by the tech team that had the house shrieking and giggling at all the right moments and ending on a plausibly grotesque note that made the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

‘Scatter: A Horror Play‘ is at Underbelly Cowgate – Iron Belly until Sun 24 Aug 2025 at 15:40