Underground Monk Show: inside Edinburgh fringe’s cult comedy of the highest order

7 hours ago 6

Deep within the cavernous Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, robed monks stand ominously on stage after midnight. It’s 2024, halfway through the Edinburgh fringe, and nobody really knows what’s happening. But in this dungeon-like sweatbox we’re about to experience a work in progress that is equal parts joyous and utterly unhinged.

Two years on, Underground Monk Show is back. While some shows arrive at the fringe with a clear elevator pitch, this one is still impossible to define. “It’s so funny because that’s constantly what we ask ourselves,” laughs co-creator John Norris, also the brains behind the absurdist comedy gem Mr Chonkers. If you were to attempt to explain what happens, you might say that the show follows the whimsical monks who, over the course of an hour, each experience a spiritual awakening of sorts, spurred on by a magical body of water that turns their visions into reality. There are flashbacks, dream sequences and a portal into another world as the performers shuffle up and down the aisles, moving together as one unit.

But there isn’t necessarily cohesion among them, which adds a ludicrous sense of tension. One night, the monks latched on to objects from members of the audience and a poor man in the front row lost his cap for the entirety of the show when, accompanied by Gregorian chants and choral masses, the monks deemed it sacred to their cause.

As Norris’s co-director Corey Podell explains, the show’s origins are appropriately absurd. It started with a night called Monks and Nuns at the Elysian theatre in Los Angeles. “It had nothing to do with monks or nuns, but we were just dressed that way,” she says. “Then from there, John just kept being like: what if we were all dressed like monks? He said it enough times that I guess he manifested it.”

A group of people in dark monks’ outfits standing in a giant metal bath

This year, with backing from Soho theatre, the monks are emerging from their underground chambers for a full run at the lofty heights of Edinburgh’s Assembly George Square Gardens. It has evolved into one of the fringe’s must-see cult hits, an ensemble show featuring Norris (who co-created it with Sam Fishman) and LA-based performers at the top of their game. Performance artist Claire Woolner is known for her bewildering solo show A Retrospection; Max Baumgarten is a founding member of the experimental improv clown group Wet the Hippo; and D Marcucci was part of Lady Magic, directed by Natalie Palamides at last year’s fringe. Bill O’Neill , who was nominated as Edinburgh’s best comedy newcomer in 2023 for The Amazing Banana Brothers, will join the show when it comes to Soho theatre in London in January.

Norris points out that the performers come from a wide range of backgrounds. “There’s so many of us from clowning, theatre, improv, dance, performance art,” he says. “We’ll see what it actually turns into this year, but there’s comedy throughout – that’s always the goal – tension, release, beauty and grace.”

Their spirit of creative openness is powered by something equally important: friendship. Most of the monks have spent years performing together in various combinations, building a shared language. “There’s a shorthand with that,” Podell says. Woolner believes the ensemble’s chemistry comes from knowing exactly how to challenge one another. “We’ve learned to play with each other by knowing how each other plays, and then pushing each other into the uncomfortable place for that person’s play,” she says. That sense of risk is central. Rather than presenting a fixed piece of theatre, the company is constantly searching for ways to keep the performance alive and unpredictable.

Despite moving to a larger venue, the ensemble remains determined to preserve the show’s underground spirit and its profound connection with the audience. “What we lose in the intimacy of that tiny beautiful cave dungeon,” Norris says, “we can maybe get some of that back with a spectacle, maybe enhancing some other things in this big room, and filling in the space.”

Norris hopes audiences experience “a nice little escape for an hour”, adding that his favourite shows are the ones where “you laugh, and you don’t really know why”. Part of the reason people keep returning is that no two performances are ever quite the same. Woolner describes the group’s ongoing mission to create “a one-time only experience”. You might find yourself sprinkled with holy water, which is actually someone’s pint, or even caught up in a dramatic love scene with one of the monks.

So what will audiences feel when arriving at this strange ceremony? “Joy and exaltation,” says Woolner without hesitation, then offers the most accurate review imaginable of Underground Monk Show. “I don’t know what the fuck that was,” she says. “But I need to see it again!”