Scaredy Fat review: Gleeful horror-comedy about terrors of cinema and of real life

Scaredy Fat

Boys’ School, Smock Alley Theatre

★★★★☆

In the old-school picture house of Colm McCready’s gleeful debut, a looped clip of dancing hot dogs and bags of popcorn forces the venue’s usher to repeat the preshow announcement over and over. This cinema isn’t the only thing that seems haunted; for Scaredy, a young fat man alert for positive representation, the history of the medium appears disturbing.

This smart, zippy co-production by McCready and SkelpieLimmer whirls through several horror film tropes while putting new spins on them. When Scaredy coyly answers the phone to a leery, mysterious caller, in reference to Wes Craven’s slasher Scream, the conversation opens up the woeful fatphobia of a gay dating scene. “How much do you weigh?” they abruptly ask.

The emotional tug of this horror-comedy is that it doubles as a sincere coming-of-age story, as Scaredy charts the horror films that made him alive to his desire. Coming from a household where being fat was jeered at or subtly shamed, the world of horror seems similarly inhospitable. Audaciously, the play takes on the medium’s fatphobic history – in one rollicking scene Scaredy becomes the eponymous alien of the 1958 pop-culture hit The Blob, standing off against his adversaries.

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Most touching is the conversation with his own self-loathing, as manifested by the poltergeist of Scaredy’s picture house. Seón Simpson, the production’s director, keeps a steady hand on an idea-filled playscript, while the vim of McCready’s performance allows the usher – eager to please while desperately trying to conceal his shame and rage – to finally settle into a picture of self-acceptance.