Edinburgh Comedy Award nominees Crybabies are returning to London with their smash hit sci-finarrative sketch adventure Bagbeard. A show about finding home, forbidden love, monsters, mystery and massive regret.
The sketch-comedy trio made up of James Gault, Michael Clarke and Ed Jones have enjoyed great success with the Bagbeard already and now play at the Soho Theatre from Tuesday 7th to Saturday 11th March 2023. Tickets are on sale here.
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| Photo by Rebecca Need-Menear |
Can you tell me about the show in your words?
Bagbeard is a lo-fi sci-fi narrative sketch epic about love, compassion and poorly made costumes. We follow the story of an unfulfilled science teacher who discovers an alien creature from a faraway universe. Desperate to achieve the scientific acclaim he's always dreamed of, he must conceal his discovery from the baying townspeople and ruthless government agent, Victor Valentine. We’ve tried to cram in as much as possible, so there’s songs, dances, fight scenes, flashbacks, flashforwards, owls and a machine that drinks old people.
What inspired the piece?
James once wore an off-licence bag on his face at uni and then 7 years later we panicked and decided to build an entire show around it. But generally we like to root our shows in something quite stupid, with the challenge then being getting the audience to become fully emotionally invested in it by the end.
What is the creative process like for the three of you?
We usually start a day’s writing with half an hour or so of chatting/slagging people off. Then we’ll open up a Google doc and sit in near silence for a long time, realise how crap we are compared to the people we’ve just been slagging off, break for lunch, come back and hopefully eventually come up with something good enough that we feel we can go back home to our partners.
How rewarding was it post COVID pandemic to get such praise for the show at the Edinburgh Fringe?
It was really lovely! The show was largely written over Zoom so it was a very scary but ultimately rewarding process starting to bring early versions of it to audiences in the build up to Edinburgh. We were so happy with the response at the fringe, we worked really hard on the show so it’s great that people have been connecting with it in the way they have.
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| Photo by Rebecca Need-Menear |
You now return to London with the show, what do you want anyone to take away from
seeing the show?
Just to have fun really. We’re really pleased that a lot of the reviews have said that the show has a real sense of joy to it as that’s the main thing we want people to feel when watching Bagbeard.
Why should anyone come and see the show?
It’s an hour of pure escapist fun which has loads and loads and loads of jokes in it. Also our lighting designer Daniel has made the show look super cool, so it’s worth coming just to see what that chap can do with a PAR can.
Crybabies: Bagbeard plays at London's Soho Theatre from Tuesday 7th to Saturday 11th March with tickets avaliable from https://sohotheatre.com/shows/crybabies-bagbeard/
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