★★★★★
Scantily Glad Theatre drag a willing audience through the most chaotic, satanic and lightly horny party at the Fringe. Here’s our Creepy Boys review at the Edinburgh Fringe.
There’s a fine tradition at the Edinburgh Fringe of shows that quite simply couldn’t exist anywhere else. It might be what the Fringe does best. The late(ish), weird, slightly unsafe-sounding alternative comedy scene unsurprisingly thrives in a city of people tired, drunk or hungover out of their minds.
The Creepy Boys are delightfully absurd inheritors of that tradition. Our titular “13-year-olds” are throwing themselves a surprise birthday party – and everyone’s invited! Leading the audience with troublingly infectious enthusiasm into the disused Victorian surgery demonstration room they’ve inexplicably found as a venue, between them, the duo have the kind of hilarious (and creepy) charm that makes it impossible not to get swept up in whatever mischief they have planned.
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That mischief is largely best left unspoiled, as the pair employ some immaculate clowning and improv skills to drag the audience through everything from satanic worship to a lengthy routine about their shared mother’s breasts.
It only works because the duo are arguably too committed to the bit. Demonstrating a level of charisma completely belying their instinctive spookiness, between them they manage to craft an environment completely without malice, but one that still makes you look over your shoulder when a creepy twin sits on the bench behind you.
The result, appropriately, feels a lot like a party. An A4 note sellotaped to the door promises bad language, sexual references and nudity (concerningly, they don’t specify from whom). It doesn’t promise impromptu The Black Parade singalongs, bodily fluid expulsions, or a brilliantly choreographed clowning interpretation of their birthing process. Still, for an audience happy to go with the flow, those are exactly the sort of things that make Creepy Boys such a night to remember.
Creepy Boys are playing at the Summerhall – Demonstration room at 22:00 until 27 August. Check out the rest of our Edinburgh Festival Fringe coverage here.
