A review of Crybabies: The Scaring, Fringe 2026

I made my way to the Pleasance Courtyard on a definitively dreich Wednesday night for comedy/horror Crybabies: The Scaring, and it was just what I needed to cheer me up from the Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated sketch group and ‘masters of the craft’ Michael Clarke, James Gault and Ed Jones. (To be honest, I’d only heard of Jones before now, but I was excited to see the show because it seemed like my vibe)

Vibe

This is definitely my vibe! Comedy horror with lots of silliness and skits, with the overarching story of an ex-priest turned stag-do planner who rocks up to a weird and unwelcoming hotel, where things just aren’t quite right. There’s some piercingly loud horror movie style screams at various points in the production – really handy if, like me, you didn’t get enough sleep the night before!

Performance

The Crybabies trio star in this brilliant comedy with plenty of thrills, chills and plot twists galore. The stage is nicely set up as we’re introduced to two priests who are trying to exorcise an unholy demon, but things all go a bit wrong.

Years later, we find the remaining former priest Father Arthur (Clarke) has moved on to planning immersive stag dos, and arrives at a dingy hotel with a strange owner (Jones) who introduces us to his very odd child, Slimothy (Gault), who is possessed and hilarious. There’s so many slick tricks, cleverly written gags and callbacks that you’ll be thoroughly entertained, with plenty of references to pop culture scares such as The Shining and The Exorcist.

I really enjoyed the whacky nature of this show, especially the bit with the immersive stag do exorcism and the hotel ghost who does his best to ‘fade away’ when he thinks it’s finally ‘His Moment’. Spoiler: it isn’t. There’s some really fun illusions, too, like the floating Alexa and the Exorcist-style head twisting that’s hilariously executed and got a lot of laughs from the audience.

There’s also the odd jump scare accomplished by flashing the torch into the audience so we can’t see very much and then turning it back onto the stage again. Simple but effective!

Overall

Crybabies: The Scaring is a really clever, witty, and brilliant comedy horror play with lots of laughs, chills, thrills and tricks that add to the stage production value in simple yet effective ways. It’s slickly done, and is highly entertaining throughout. I’d definitely recommend this one to my classic horror-loving friends.