EDINBURGH 2025: SPY MOVIE: THE PLAY! Q&A

BWW catches up with Jack Michael Stacey & Matthew Howell to chat about bringing Spy Movie: The Play! to the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Spy Movie: The Play!?

Jack: It’s a wildly ambitious, low-budget homage to the spy movie genre—with a lot of chaos and cardboard thrown in. Think DIY James Bond. A frustrated screenwriter can’t get her film funded, so she stages it live on a fringe theatre budget with a truckload of props, a team of misfits, and bucketloads of pure theatrical imagination.

Matt: It’s part parody, part satire and a celebration of all things film, comedy and fringe theatre. All the trappings of a Hollywood blockbuster are there: lasers, rooftop chases, evil villains with dodgy accents— all delivered live on stage. Think the 39 Steps and Noises Off meets The naked gun via Spinal Tap all wrapped up as a Spy Movie on stage. You won’t have seen anything like it before.

How did the creators of the show meet?

Jack: We met in the West End cast of The Play That Goes Wrong, and bonded over our love of comedy. I thought Matt was funny so I asked him to look at a script I was writing and he sent me a full re-write. We haven’t stopped re-writing each other's work since. In fact, he’s probably re-written this already. He is also very charming and handsome.

Matt: I was leaving my time on The Play That Goes Wrong and Jack was starting; he came in to shadow me doing the back stage track. So the joke is that I taught Jack everything he knows. The reality is that we hit it off straight away, had a very similar sense of humour and immediately started bouncing ideas off each other. We started writing SPY MOVIE: The Play! together while touring Peter Pan Goes Wrong a few years later. We were living out of suitcases and scribbling ideas on napkins backstage. It all started because we said yes to a slot at The Hope Theatre and had the idea to write another spy script (we’d already written a sitcom pilot set in MI6 for BAFTA) and we landed on the question: “What if someone tried to stage a Bond film live, with no budget, and too much enthusiasm?” The rest is confetti-strewn history.

How has the show been received so far?

Jack: Better than we ever expected. After The Hope we had a sold-out run at the 2024 Fringe, nabbing the only slot we could in a theatre at The Pleasance Courtyard we thought was far too big, picked up a bunch of lovely ★★★★★ reviews, and were named one of Instafest’s “Best of the Fest”, picked up a British Comedy Guide Recommendation, a Standing Ovation award nomination and met with Norwich Theatre who are now producing the show. That still feels a bit surreal.

Matt: And audiences really got behind it—from kids giggling at the slapstick to spy film fans clocking all the nods and references. Plus, we’ve just announced a return to The Pleasance for Fringe 2025 (Above 12:55) and another UK tour with Norwich Theatre in 2026, which means more people will get to see just how far a bit of gaffer tape and blind ambition take you.

Why bring it back to the Fringe?

Jack: Honestly? Because we love it. Last year’s Fringe was a blur of adrenaline, flyering, and near-fatal prop malfunctions—but we learned so much about the show, and the audiences were incredible. Coming back with a bigger venue (Pleasance Above!), a tighter script, and more confetti felt like a no-brainer.

Matt: When we took the show to the fringe last year the original script was over eighty pages and had to be cut down to fifty, in total we had about a week of rehearsals and some very thrown together previews. This gave the show a frantic and exciting energy but we had so many ideas that we couldn't develop fully. However things still turned out pretty well and so to have the opportunity to continue to develop the show and bring it back to audiences in a more fully realised way is very exciting.

Who would you recommend comes to see the show?

Matt: Anyone aged 12 to 112 who likes laughing, explosions (safe ones), and seeing things you’ve seen a million times in a way you’ve never seen before.

Jack: It’s for comedy fans, theatre fans, spy fans, and people who just need an hour of joyful nonsense. Whether you’re a stressed-out parent, a drama student, or someone who once dreamt of being Bond but ended up doing HR, this show’s for you.

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