Crybabies' The Scaring Delivers Chills and Laughs
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Crybabies trio Michael Clarke, James Gault, and Ed Jones — also known as a Radio 4 group — wrote and performed The Scaring, reviewed in the comic horror lineage of Garth Marenghi and Andrew Doherty's Gay Witch Sex Cult.
- The Scaring centres on Father Arthur, a priest who loses his exorcising partner to a beast from another dimension and takes work in the immersive stag-do industry before being summoned to the Lyle Away hotel, a guesthouse the reviewer compares unfavourably to the Overlook from The Shining.
- The plot packs in escaped serial killers, a bloodlust-driven haunted boy, a possessed bouncy ball, and an anti-woke spook alongside themes of parental bereavement, which the reviewer notes the show carries despite its comic register.
- The production features illusions, jump scares, and visual gags that the reviewer describes as 'production values rarely seen on the fringe,' including a 'haunted dolly' scene referencing The Exorcist's Regan twist.
- Standout gags include a hotel guest/ghost 'forever fading away' into another realm and a Two Ronnies-style conversation between Arthur, the hotelier, and a spectre only one of them can perceive.
Why it matters: The review positions Crybabies as a fringe act operating at production values above their tier, reinforcing a growing festival appetite for horror-comedy pastiche in the tradition of Garth Marenghi. For festival programmers and Radio 4 listeners, the Radio 4 pedigree of the trio suggests crossover potential from stage to broadcast.
Ask SkimNews
