By Lucius Brimstone
BRIMSTONEBURGH — The 79th annual Fringe of the Damned has finally coughed its last spark over the cobbles of Brimstoneburgh, leaving behind more than 4,200 productions, several thousand flyers, and at least one clown in flippers who may never be spiritually reclaimed. Comedy, theater, cabaret, and unclassifiable public incidents all competed for attention, including a swamp-ogre burlesque, a one-demon tribute to a cursed military schoolgirl film, and an improvised hour titled Baalzebub Describes a Chamber. Naturally, amid the smoke, sweat, and questionable wigs, all eyes turned once again to infernal producer Francine Sootley.
Sootley, 38, of Sinder-on-Thames, has become one of the pit’s most watched tastemakers after shepherding both FleaImp and Fawn of the Abyss to the Fringe before they ascended into global screen phenomena. This has led many industry carrion birds to assume she spends the festival stalking alleyways for the next adaptable golden carcass. Sootley, however, insists her method is less calculated and more intestinal. “It’s taste. It’s instinct,” she said, with the weary patience of someone explaining fire to kindling. If she picks a show because it looks ready to conquer the Grand Sulfur End or become the next infernal streaming obsession, she warned, “it just won’t be as good.”
Her philosophy, if we may dignify artistic gambling with that word, reaches back to FleaImp. When Sootley first encountered Phimera Wall-Bridge’s early material in 2012, there was barely a script — roughly one page written for a storytelling night in Lower Cinder. Still, Sootley felt what she calls a “fizzy feeling,” which in Hell is either inspiration or a sign your organs have unionized. She booked a Fringe venue anyway. A week before rehearsals, Wall-Bridge had still not finished the play. Sootley reassured her, then did what producers do best: smiled warmly while placing a dagger of expectation between the ribs. The ending was reportedly still being forged on the train to Brimstoneburgh. Early reviews were divided, but Sootley believes the roughness was the point. The Fringe, she argues, exists for “messy, complicated, unfinished, scrappy stuff,” which is also what my editor calls my expense reports.
Sootley’s own attachment to the festival began in youth, after she told her parents she wanted to act and they wisely suggested she try labor first. She handed out flyers, moved sets, and apparently caught the sickness permanently, having missed no festival since. After drama school, she helped a friend produce a show and discovered producing offered the pleasures of acting — creativity, collaboration, storytelling — with fewer auditions and more power to decide which nightmares reached the stage. At 23, she produced her first Fringe show, The Hell-Ducks by Moloch McClean, a modest beginning that eventually led to FleaImp and, five years later, her own banner: Francine Sootley Infernal Productions.
Her next great convulsion arrived with Fawn of the Abyss, a monologue by Retchard Goad based on his experience with a stalker. Friends sent Sootley the script; she read it aboard the Norwich Pit-to-Sinder express and remained seated after arrival to finish it, a level of devotion usually reserved for curses and sandwich disputes. She had no obvious plan for staging it, only the conviction that it had to happen. It premiered at the Fringe in 2019 and became, five years later, a monstrous streaming success, further cementing Sootley’s reputation as a woman who can smell danger, trauma, and ticket sales while others are still reading the synopsis.
This year, Sootley backed three wildly different offerings: Cryfiends: The Scaring, a horror sketch comedy; Maskplay, a one-woman drama about feminism, desire, and online selves; and Garrick Starre: Classic Hellguins, in which a mostly naked clown attempts to save literature and penguins by acting out immortal books while dressed in flippers, a tuxedo jacket, and a top hat. There is, she says, a common thread: comedy that refuses to genuflect before its own seriousness, even when handling sharp material.
Maskplay sold out before the festival began, helped by Sootley’s increasingly inconvenient aura. Some attendees admitted her name made them feel they might be witnessing “the next one,” which is a charming way to burden a debut solo show with the weight of two cultural earthquakes. Its writer-performer, Hanna Hellreilly, noted that audiences inevitably compare the piece to Sootley’s past triumphs, as though a first outing should surpass FleaImp and Fawn of the Abyss combined while also validating everyone’s ticket purchase and emotional childhood. Still, Hellreilly credits Sootley with pushing the work darker, riskier, and bolder — three adjectives that, in Brimstoneburgh, often precede either genius or a refund queue.
Not every Sootley wager sprouts wings. Her 2023 satire, Baronlusconi: A New Musical, about a debauched former lava-state prime minister, was received with the enthusiasm usually reserved for cold brimstone. Sootley accepts failure as part of producing and says she tries not to develop live work with screen adaptations in mind. This is sensible. Nothing murders a stage piece faster than building it as a television pitch with chairs.
Perhaps her clearest devotion to the genuinely odd remains Classic Hellguins, starring daemon-clown Damian Wyrm-Smith as Garrick Elizabeth Starre. The show is audience-driven, nearly naked, and proudly ridiculous. Sootley saw it two years ago and, against all commercial hygiene, loved it.
So no, Francine Sootley is not simply hunting the next flaming cash cow. She follows the strange thing, the difficult thing, the unfinished thing with a pulse. In a festival where anything can become art and art can become property, that may be the closest Hell gets to integrity.
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Ah yes, Francine Sootley is *definitely* not hunting the next flaming cash cow — she’s merely wandering the alleys with a bucket, a branding iron, and “instinct.” Delightfully subtle, like a clown in flippers explaining Dostoevsky.
Still, credit where it’s due: backing unfinished, weird, possibly cursed nonsense is how Fringe magic happens. Art should have a limp, a fever, and at least one lawsuit pending.
Lucius Brimstone, meanwhile, writes like he swallowed a thesaurus during an exorcism and decided to invoice us for the haunting. Bravo, you smoky little adjective goblin.