Brighton Fringe 2025

You’re SO F**KING Croydon! is a fast-paced solo musical comedy performed and written by Katie Hurley, blending stand-up, clown, poetic monologue, and live rap. With a backdrop of projected film and audio drawn from the artist’s roots in Croydon, the show charts a personal, often chaotic journey through a life lived in and around the UK’s most-maligned borough. Mixing humour and emotional depth, the piece explores themes of identity, class, belonging, and the restless search for home.

Hurley performs with confidence and charisma, holding the stage throughout with comic timing and physical precision. A capable vocal performer, she seamlessly moves between rap, spoken word, and clown-inflected character work, ably playing all the parts herself. Her self-proclaimed identity as a “Chav Fleabagger” is both comic and pointed, offering a satirical take on cultural stereotypes while grounding the show in a recognisable working-class reality.

Croydon is, unsurprisingly, the target of much of the satire – the UK’s third-largest IKEA gets a mention – but it’s never only the butt of the joke. There is a kind of affection here, and Hurley succeeds in painting a layered portrait of the place as both punchline and anchor. The piece is described as a love-hate letter to Croydon, but more truthfully it feels like a life story: messy, funny, painful, and emotionally textured.

The integration of filmed footage from “the Cronx”, live and recorded audio, and a dynamic soundscape is impressively managed. These elements serve to enrich the performance without overwhelming it – though there are moments where the show risks becoming overburdened. There is so much packed into this piece – structurally and emotionally – that a touch more dramaturgical shaping would help refine its arc. The gear shifts between emotional poetry and sharp comedy mostly land well, but the transitions could occasionally benefit from more breathing space.

There are echoes of Bryony Kimmings and Rosy Carrick in both content and style – particularly in the way Hurley commits to taking the audience with her all the way, wherever the narrative leads. A Berkoff-style poetic monologue midway through hints at a deeper inquiry: into the fear of stillness, silence, and the idea of home. This is theatre that poses real questions while never losing its grip on the audience.

Inventive and emotionally resonant, the show’s standout moments come in its sudden tonal shifts – from Baywatch-theme club nights to raw admissions of failure and fragility. There is a striking honesty here, unafraid to be messy or inconsistent, and it’s often in those moments that the piece is most powerful. Hurley is unafraid to “go there”, and it’s in these moments that the performance is at its most affecting.

The show opens with Hurley mouthing to an original rap track – a high-energy choice that sets the tone. With strong comic timing and a confident presence, she proceeds to play every character, shifting voices and physicalities with skill. Modern clown and mime techniques are used throughout, often to undercut a moment of sincerity or explode a stereotype. Her performance is physically inventive, tightly timed, and clearly honed, able to leap between comedy and poignancy without losing coherence. She is a capable vocalist, but it’s her physical storytelling and stage command that anchor the piece.

Croydon is presented both as battleground and birthplace – the source of many punchlines, yes, but also the ground beneath a life not always well lived. The UK’s third-largest IKEA becomes a kind of landmark for the absurdity of suburban sprawl. But behind the satire, there is an undercurrent of affection and regret. This isn’t just a roast – it’s a personal reckoning. Croydon becomes a fixed point around which chaos and memory orbit. Hurley’s stand-up style interludes are recognisable and sharply drawn; there’s a sense she could be talking about Croydon or Sheffield or Swansea – and that’s partly the point. She invites the audience to insert their own geography into the mix, drawing on universal rites of passage: Baywatch-themed club nights, teenage misfires, the pull of home.

The emotional poetry that intersperses the show is striking and often disarming, altering the mood and slowing the rhythm just enough before the narrative picks up pace again. There is a clear build-up and come-down across the piece, which reflects not just narrative structure but a lived experience of manic highs and depressive lows. Thematically, it begins to open out: an inquiry into the fear of stillness, the cost of silence, and the question of whether home is a place or a performance.

Technically, the piece is packed. Visuals, live and recorded audio, and a projected film backdrop from the Cronx are integrated well and used to enhance rather than distract. That said, at times the sheer density of material threatens to swamp the clarity of the story. A little dramaturgical tightening – a clearer shape to the rise and fall of the show – would help the core themes land more powerfully. There’s a lot here, and occasionally less would have delivered more.

Nevertheless, this is a generous, layered, and highly engaging performance. Hurley’s work recalls artists like Bryony Kimmings and Rosy Carrick – performers unafraid to “go there”, and to bring the audience with them. You’re SO F**KING Croydon! is funny, sad, unsettling and deeply relatable. It’s a show about breaking and mending, and the complex truth that art might be the only way to tell a story truthfully. Hurley is a multi-talented performer who knows how to structure and stage a show. The audience gave it a well deserved ovation at the end. This is a show to catch as soon as you can, for its experimental spirit, risk taking, costumes, physical comedy and theatre, full on, direct story sharing, wit, wisdom, pain and laughter. I was knackered at the end, and glad to be.