There is a good little play struggling to get out of Horrorshow. Written by Doug Deans for Chronic Insanity, this gig-theatre piece follows lifelong Isle of Wight friends Dan and Ollie through one final adventure together before their lives begin moving in very different directions.
Deans plays Dan, guitar in hand, alongside Joe Matty as the more academically inclined Ollie on keyboards. Director Joe Strickland completes the live band on drums and percussion, as well as providing the voices of the other characters. Original music and lyrics are by Anya Pearson, who also provides musical direction.
The writing has plenty going for it. Dan and Ollie are believable as two young men who have grown up together but are beginning to recognise that friendship doesn’t necessarily mean travelling through life in the same direction. Against them looms the enormous annual Isle of Wight Festival, an event which consumes their home each summer but which, significantly, doesn’t necessarily belong to the people who actually live there.
There is nostalgia here, class difference, family difficulty and that uncomfortable moment when youthful friendship encounters adult reality. Deans and Matty carry that relationship well, while Pearson’s songs have sufficient energy and wit to make the gig-theatre proposition entirely credible.
Unfortunately, the production surrounding them does the material few favours.
The Anatomy Lecture Theatre is a notoriously unforgiving acoustic for amplified performance, and Horrorshow attacks it with electric guitar, keyboards, percussion and amplified voices. At times it feels less like controlled gig theatre and more like three musicians busking together in an anatomy theatre.
The technical level is surprisingly basic. Instruments are plugged in and played at us, but there is little sense of the sound being sculpted for this extremely difficult room. Its reverberation punishes volume, particularly amplified or shouted vocals, when what the space really rewards is restraint and absolute control.
Lighting offers little assistance. Performers and audience sit together beneath essentially the same general wash. There is nowhere to hide, for them or for us, and consequently little opportunity to create intimacy, isolate a memory or allow the music to change the theatrical temperature of the room.
That’s a shame, because the performances themselves are certainly not bad, and neither is Deans’ play. There are affecting moments as these two friends look nostalgically backwards while one prepares to leave the island, and the songs suggest a production capable of considerably more.
Strickland’s direction could be tightened, but the greater problem is the marriage between show, technology and space. Gig theatre needs more than plugging in the amps and playing.
With better sound, more considered lighting and perhaps a room sympathetic to amplified music, Horrorshow could become something rather good. The writing, music and performers are there. What they desperately need is the technical control to let us hear and see it.
Playing until August 31st 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026HORRORS
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 26th August 2026
North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr
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