Absolutely Beastly

Something blood-curdling is heading to the Edinburgh Fringe – and it’s likely to be hilarious. Following last year’s The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, their grotesquely funny first production, Kill the Beast theatre ensemble are back at the Pleasance Courtyard with new show He Had Hairy Hands. Classic horror and Royston Vasey collide in this 1970s werewolf detective mystery, much praised when it previewed in London earlier this year.

When I meet Kill the Beast members Clem Garrity—the show’s director—and performer Ollie Jones, they agree the macabre comedy of The League of Gentlemen has been a major influence on the company’s work, with its weaving of sketches into an overarching story. “It’s based in this warped normality,” says Jones. “We don’t like to get bogged down in anything too serious.”

With He Had Hairy Hands, which Garrity jokingly calls “the difficult second album”, they’ve expanded on every element of The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, as well as exploring a lurid new corner of the horror genre. “It was very much inspired by the world of Hammer in the '60s and '70s,” Garrity explains. Moving from a homicidal child to a classic movie monster “felt like a natural progression.”

The Boy Who Kicked Pigs was adapted from a novella by Doctor Who star Tom Baker. This time, Garrity and Jones have relished working without the constraints of someone else’s story. “We have a desire to be making our own stuff,” says Garrity. “So people can look back and see the work of Kill the Beast rather than the company who staged, say, Shakespeare.” He hopes that the result is even better: "We’ve worked hard on our gags and creating a more structurally satisfying play.”

Kill the Beast’s strong visual style distinguishes them from many new theatre companies. “There are other sketch troupes who don’t put the same level of detail into the design or staging that we do. I think it lifts it," says Garrity. “It’s a really good starting point,” agrees Jones, explaining that their shows often stem from a strong idea for the setting. In The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, this was a comically twisted Kent suburbia realised with animated backdrops and in blood-spattered monochrome.

He Had Hairy Hands evolved from an overriding sense it should be “grimy, green, sepia and Northern,” according to Jones. “We could see the mildew dripping off the walls, the plastic covers on the sofas and the ceiling peeling off.” The show practically wrote itself after that, says Garrity. “If you know you’re in a town surrounded by moorlands, you instinctively ask, ‘What scenes happen on moors?’”

But in the tradition of the best horror movies, don’t expect to see too much of the rampaging lycanthrope at the bloodied heart of He Had Hairy Hands. “I don’t believe in unveiling the monster too early,” Garrity says. “It’s that classic thing of a creature only being satisfying if you get little glimpses.”

Deadpan, Jones chips in: “Yeah, in fact, come expecting no werewolf at all.”