New Zealand collective Binge Culture’s Werewolf arrives at Summerhall with considerable word-of-mouth behind it, and sizeable audiences suggest this immersive horror has certainly found its pack. I am less convinced.
TechCube Zero provides a naturally effective setting. On arrival, I find someone sitting behind a desk ticking us off and conducting a headcount before reporting back to our three wardens, Joel Baxendale, Stella Reid and Hannah Kelly, who devised and perform the piece.
We are Safehouse 656, apparently protected from the lycanthropic horrors outside, and we are informed that we will remain here for seven days. There is a timekeeper and gatekeeper, rules to follow and an initially convincing sense that we have entered a functioning emergency system.
On every seat is a card containing an individual instruction. I may have something to read, information to reveal or behaviour to perform, and so may everyone else. Don’t worry about missing out, there appears to be something for everyone. And, as we’re firmly reminded afterwards, they’re not souvenirs. Leave them behind for the next audience.
It’s a clever mechanism. I never quite know whether peculiar behaviour from the stranger sitting beside me is spontaneous, instructed or evidence of something altogether hairier.
Baxendale, Reid and Kelly handle the considerable improvisation impressively, reacting to an audience whose responses inevitably make every performance different. Oliver Devlin’s sound design and Lucas Neal’s lighting also help transform the room as events become progressively less secure.
Yet once Werewolf gets its teeth into us, I want it to bite considerably harder.
The premise continually suggests to me a much darker psychological experiment than the production ultimately delivers. Lock strangers together, give them conflicting information, introduce fear, encourage suspicion and then watch how quickly apparently civilised people begin turning upon each other. I can see something genuinely disturbing here.
Instead, Werewolf repeatedly retreats into comedy.
Edinburgh is practically a comedy festival already. Does a werewolf story really need to join in? It is frustrating – I want to go and shake them and say you only have an hour, don’t waste it, play this absolutely straight, progressively remove my sense of security and trust, and make the experience genuinely terrifying. Instead, comedy repeatedly provides an escape valve just as I feel the psychological pressure should be increasing.
That’s infuriating because I can see all the necessary ingredients. The performers understand their audience, the interactive mechanism works and the environment is ripe for manipulation. Yet I find the horror watered down, as though the production is reluctant to push its audience beyond a broadly accessible level of discomfort.
Most problematically, I feel the hour just expires rather than the story reaching an inevitable conclusion. Time runs out, and therefore the show must end.
Werewolf is clever, skilfully improvised and understandably popular, but somewhere inside it I sense a much darker, scarier and more psychologically unsettling show trying to escape.
Playing until August 31st 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026WEREWOL
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 26th August 2026
North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr
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