Review: Creepy Boys

Canadian queer theatre group Scantily Glad are hosting a birthday party – and we’re all invited. Creepy Boys brings together real-life couple SE Grummet and Sam Kruger, who both had solo Fringe shows last year, to play ‘identical’ and hyper twins on their 13th birthday. 

The audience are made to promise they will be “fun and flirty not down and dirty” guests; a sentiment that does well to sum up the ensuing narrative. It's told through a mix of vaudeville, Y2K pop-culture references and – every 13-year-olds favourite game – truth or dare.

In their mannerisms, Grummet and Kruger seem as if they’ve both eaten four tubs of Toxic Waste before the show, with the audience manically greeted and sat down by the pair before being handed party supplies for the upcoming festivities. Occasionally, the performers talk over one another (as every sibling does) and their repetition results in scenes feeling drawn out. But despite this, their energy is infectious, with the audience participation creating some of the funniest moments of the show.

A queer wink of the eye is ever present throughout Creepy Boys – from the twin’s obsession with Willam Dafoe to a flash forward sequence where one twin dreams of sharing a massive bed with “my ethical non-monogamous partners with different mattresses for their varying back support needs”. This helps to elevate the show from just some adults playing excitable children to thinking about how things like teenage pop-culture obsessions, child wonderment and being an ‘identical’ twin intersect with growing up queer.