Crybabies: The Scaring - Crybabies discuss horror, comedy and The Scaring ahead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer nominees Crybabies return to the Edinburgh Fringe with Crybabies: The Scaring, a fast-paced horror-comedy created alongside Olivier Award-winning Fleabag and Baby Reindeer producers Francesca Moody Productions and director Jon Brittain (Baby Reindeer, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!). The show follows a former priest who checks into a remote hotel haunted by a dead guest, only to find himself caught in an increasingly chaotic double act involving demons, serial killers, Shakespearean zombies and a deeply suspicious hotel manager. We caught up with the trio to find out more about their latest Fringe show.

The Scaring plays with familiar horror clichés while affectionately celebrating them. Which classic horror films or stories have had the biggest influence on the show?

Ed has only seen about four films, so he’d probably say the bit in Toy Story 2 where Ham and Slinky are driving the car. There is nothing scarier than the idea of toys operating heavy machinery. I’m sorry, but it shouldn’t be allowed. 

But other than that, you’ll likely notice nods to Psycho, The Shining, Pet Sematary and The Exorcist. 

Crybabies are well-known for sketch comedy, yet each Fringe show, you seem to push further into long-form storytelling. What keeps drawing you towards bigger narratives rather than a collection of standalone sketches?

There’s such a skill in writing a perfect short-form sketch. When we first started out, we took huge inspiration from the likes of Pappy’s and Lola and Jo - real masters of the sketch game. But the more we wrote together, the more we loved the idea of an audience becoming invested in characters who they initially thought were simply 2-dimensional weirdos. 

Pushing that long-form narrative structure means that hopefully we can have even bigger payoffs because the audience have, often without meaning to, started to care about these guys. Well maybe not care. Just not actively despise. 

Is keeping the story coherent the biggest challenge when writing something so chaotic?

Certainly. We’re essentially trying to condense a 90-minute movie into an hour-long Fringe show, so we don’t have much time to play with. We find that if a sketch ties to the story, the laughs only get better. But saying that, the most fun often comes from narratively justifying a sketch that has absolutely no right to be there.

In our previous show we had a sketch about a grifter using old people to pretend they were from the future. It was completely incongruous to the rest of the plot but, by somehow we shoehorned it in there and it ended up being one of our favourite bits. 

You've described The Scaring as your biggest and most ambitious production yet. Were there ideas you'd been sitting on for years that only became possible with this show?

The great thing about this show is we’ve been able to build it with people who actually know what they’re doing. Because of that, a lot of its ideas have been made collaboratively. We’ve had access to people who build stage illusions, people who have designed projections for West End shows, people who have won actual Oliviers. The fact they’re helping us make someone look like a bouncing ball is still completely beyond us. 

The hotel manager is described as Norman Bates-esque, while the show also features ghosts, zombies and waxworks. Tell us, what are the Crybabies’ favourite horror movies?

Much to Ed’s reluctance, we went to see Bring Her Back by the Philippou brothers, which is truly excellent. Sure, there’s not a lot of laughs in there, but the story, the message, the scares, the gore are all exceptionally good. And if anyone can convince me to keep a corpse in my garden freezer, it’s Sally Philips.  

Audiences have come to expect lightning-fast character changes from Crybabies. Do you ever worry about the mechanics of those transformations becoming the joke, or is that part of the fun?

In our heads, our character work is so meticulous, so breathtakingly accurate that people shouldn’t be laughing at all. But then they did, and we pretended it was all part of the plan. We’re always far too ambitious with the number of people the three of us play, so any costume mishaps that happen along the way are completely our own fault. 

Since your last Fringe run, you've all been working across television, radio and podcasts as well as together as Crybabies. Anything you’re particularly proud of? And how have those individual experiences fed back into the way you collaborate as a trio?

We were really proud of Crybabies Present… on Radio 4. It was a four-part series of movie parodies that allowed us to work with the likes of Jim Howick, Susan Wakoma, Amy Gledhill, and somehow Greg James playing a Soviet sympathizer. Working on projects individually has certainly helped us rope in people who really should know better. 

Crybabies: The Scaring will be performed at 8pm at Pleasance Courtyard from 5^th – 30^th August

Booking link: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/crybabies-scaring