Binge Fringe Award-Winner ‘Goblin’ Brings Darkly Comic Nostalgia to Park Theatre This November

Having won a Binge Fringe Queer Performers Award and received a dozen four and five-star reviews, Goblin is a “seriously impressive” (★★★★ The Stage) darkly comic solo performance about growing up, obsession and the transformative power of being seen. Written and performed by critically acclaimed Derek Mitchell, known online as @derekscottmitchell and @letsdoubledutch, this masterfully crafted show has been several years in the making. It has been developed across Camden People’s Theatre, Pleasance and Summerhall, as well as, at one point, a collapsed yurt, before finally making its way to Park Theatre this autumn.

Set in 2007, 15-year-old Eliot addresses his imaginary friend, confidant and constant companion, Goblin. As Eliot grows from an emo teenager into an adult, he becomes increasingly isolated within his own family and drawn into a secretive, destructive relationship with Max, a much older alternative British reality TV star. Told through a shifting cast of characters, Goblin explores what happens when the person you once knew becomes almost impossible to recognise, what it means to love someone who is slipping away, and what it takes to find yourself again when you no longer recognise who you’ve become.

At its centre is an unusual theatrical proposition: the audience becomes a character within the story, forming its emotional spine in a deliciously twisted nostalgia deep-dive into the early noughties. As Eliot’s choices keep them guessing, those watching are continually drawn deeper into a world that looks starkly different from where they started, taking them on a wickedly sharp storytelling journey. Co-directed by Ellie BW (Liebenspiel) and Sammy Glover (The Last Show Before We Die), and developed in collaboration with writer-performer Ben Target (LORENZO),Goblin is the result of years of development and contributions from an extraordinary creative team. For Mitchell, laughter is both a coping mechanism and a survival strategy, but it is also a theatrical device: a way of revealing something about the characters, the audience and ourselves. 

Derek Mitchell comments, Developing  work in that space takes time, patience, and a genuinely collaborative approach. It’s also (I hope) consistently funny, because I believe that laughter and darkness don’t cancel each other out, and are in fact often drawing from the same well. Ultimately the show is about a person whom it’s hard to love, and what made them that way. It lives between genres: not quite theatre, not quite comedy, trying to be its own thing. BringingGoblin to the Park Theatre feels like the moment this show has been working toward since it began: a London audience, a proper run, and finally the space to let it breathe.

Goblinis ultimately rooted in lived experience, exploring the story through Mitchell’s lens of the disorientating experience of being transatlantic and living between places, cultures and different versions of yourself. It uses this sense of displacement to explore the isolation of its characters, and ultimately tells a story about the versions of ourselves we become, the people we confide in, and the imaginary companions we create who just might be able to help us through.Goblin ultimately asks whether, beneath all the noise, humour and hurt, we can find our way back to the parts of ourselves we thought we had lost.

It’s a disturbing, inventive set-up for an hour that is also, against the odds, genuinely funny.★ ★ ★ ★ Fest Magazine

Masterfully performed, skillfully written, and passionately delivered, Goblin is as painfully honest as it is uproariously funny. ★ ★ ★ ★The List

Main image courtesy of Goblin

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