INDY! is a whip-cracking romp through the first three Indiana Jones films in just 70 minutes. Three performers. One fedora. And a whole lot of snakes.
TICKET LINK:https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:6713/
1. INDY! compresses three iconic adventure films into 70 chaotic minutes — what makes the Indiana Jones film series world such rich material for theatrical parody?
BRENDAN: It’s pretty much the definitive Hollywood blockbuster action movie franchise, and a firm family favourite since the first film came out back in 1981. There’s boulders, mine cart chases, aerial dog-fights and countless special effects, so you’d have to be an idiot to try and recreate it on stage! Unfortunately, nobody told us that until we’d had the posters made. So here we are.
DANIEL: And beyond the spectacle, the films are packed with unforgettable characters, globe-trotting adventures and moments that have become part of pop culture. Most audiences already know the stories, which means we can have a lot of fun playing with expectations, celebrating the things people love about Indy while also poking fun at them. It’s a world that’s larger than life, which makes it perfect for parody.
Is one answer.
Another would be; We realised how cool we looked in brown leather jackets and fedoras.
2. Your shows often celebrate fandom as much as they spoof it; how important was it for INDY! to feel like a love letter to the original films rather than simply a send-up?
BRENDAN: You’ve got to be careful with a pre-existing fanbase. You can really only get away with making fun of a thing if it’s coming from a place of love and appreciation for the original source material. If you’re not a true fan they’ll sniff you out in a second! But when it’s truly authentic, in a “by fans, for fans” way – it’s like being at our own little convention.
DANIEL: Brendan’s absolutely right. Like a wise 700 year old knight. Which is annoying, because I was hoping to disagree with him for comic effect.
You have to genuinely love the source material and be happy to sit down and watch it over and over again, still finding yourself captivated by the same moments you loved the very first time you saw them. The moment you stop loving it, it becomes snarky, and snarky is easy. What’s much more fun is celebrating the thing while also gently pointing out its quirks. We’re laughing with Indy, not at Indy.
Love is the key ingredient which I suppose is why we’ve never parodied Twilight. We’d be forced to watch it first.
3. The production relies on homemade props, shadow puppets and theatrical invention — what excites you about creating blockbuster spectacle through deliberately low-tech stagecraft?
BRENDAN: We all know and love the Indiana Jones films, and there’s no way you could do a remake that could live up to it… but on stage? Necessity is the mother of invention. The limitations of fringe theatre are the perfect parameters for creativity. How the heck are we going to melt the faces of a room full of Nazis? I’m looking forward to finding out!
DANIEL: Did you know Steven Spielberg’s original vision was to do the Indiana Jones movies using only old egg boxes, pipe cleaners and some toilet rolls. Totally true. It’s a shame the millions of dollars from the studios got in the way of that. (if anyone would like to send us millions of dollars to get in the way of our artistic vision, we’re more than willing to make that sacrifice.)
4. Between Potted Potter, Buffy Revamped and now INDY!, you’ve built a reputation for reimagining beloved pop culture worlds live on stage — what have you learned about why audiences connect so strongly with nostalgia-driven comedy?
BRENDAN: It’s about identity. The books, films and TV shows that really connect with us inform our character. We define ourselves based on the things that we love. And then, when someone makes a niche joke about your specialist subject, you get to do that creepy snort-laugh people do at Shakespeare to let you know they get it. And isn’t that what we’re all after, really?
DANIEL: I think nostalgia gets a bad reputation sometimes, as if it’s just looking backwards. But the things we’re nostalgic for are usually the stories that shaped us. They remind us where we were, who we were with, and how we felt when we first experienced them.
The comedy comes from the fact that we can hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time: “I absolutely love this thing” and “this thing is also completely ridiculous.” In fact, I’d say the more we love something, the more ridiculous details we notice.
It’s kind of like therapy but with melting nazis and snakes!
5. Comedy built around things going “spectacularly off the rails” still requires precise timing and structure — how do you balance controlled chaos with tightly choreographed performance?
BRENDAN: We rise at dawn, a half hour before the first call of the morning lark, and in the darkness we TRAIN. But seriously, it takes a lot of work to be an idiot, and we make sure we put in the hours. Every stumble is tightly timed to make sure it has the desired effect, we don’t want to look stupid out there!
DANIEL: To be truly good at something takes years of practice, discipline and honing your craft. To appear bad at something takes a very particular set of skills.
The trick is that the audience should feel like anything could go wrong at any moment, while we know exactly which thing is going wrong, when it’s going wrong, and who it’s going wrong to.
We’re actually quite good at the “bad” part now. It’s the “appear” part we’re still working on.
6. Working with director Owen Lewis, how did you approach translating the scale and cinematic pace of the original films into something that works theatrically in an intimate Fringe setting?
BRENDAN: I’ve had the joy of working with Dan and Owen on some pretty ambitious shows in the past, from a staged version of King Kong to a fast-paced retelling of the first two seasons of The Crown, so thankfully we have some prior experience in this world. The key is to keep it fun, flowing and never let “common sense” stand in the way of a good joke.
DANIEL: I think all three of us share the same instinct: we’re never interested in replicating the films, we’re interested in capturing the feeling of them. Owen is brilliant at finding the theatrical solution to a cinematic problem. Sometimes that’s clever stagecraft. Sometimes it’s a shadow puppet. Sometimes it’s just Brendan running very fast while making aeroplane noises.