Goblin: Derek Mitchell Writes the Story Behind the Show

It began with a jog around Amsterdam, a global pandemic and an idea about an evil gay spin instructor. Five years later, Goblin has become a story about influence, identity and what happens when someone you care about changes beyond recognition. But the audience isn’t simply watching this story unfold: they become part of it, experiencing that transformation alongside him. Derek Mitchell shares the story behind the show and the collaborators who helped it find its feet on its journey to Park Theatre.

The idea for Goblin came during the deep lockdown of spring 2020. I was lost spiritually, professionally, really in every sense, and I’d get up early in the morning and jog around Amsterdam Forrest Gump-style, trying to outrun whatever was happening. Somewhere in all of that, I had this idea to make a show about an evil gay spin instructor.

Once our medical masks came off and I was able to test the concept, I did a few very loosey-goosey work-in-progress performances in London in 2022. They sucked. The character didn’t work, the audience didn’t respond, and I hated doing it. I’d never made a show like this before. But I felt like there was a kernel of something still to discover in there, so I kept going.

I brought Ellie B.W. on board as co-director, and she helped facilitate and guide my process of writing and developing the story. This gradually came to focus a little less on the person who becomes an evil gay spin instructor, and more on how he began life as a sweet, naive kid with a lot of good in his heart.

Once we zeroed in on that duality, things got chewy and interesting. We started telling the story of what happens when someone grows up to be something they don’t recognise anymore, and what gets lost in that process. And especially what happens when part of that transformation occurs because they fall under the influence of a person they think they love, but who has everything but that young person’s best interests at heart.

We developed the show in gay bars and basements all around London in a yurt at the Edinburgh Fringe (which collapsed). With time and a lot of hard work, an increasing number of brilliant collaborators came on board – Han Sayles, our technical designer, was there from the very beginning; then Hattie North on sound design, Sammy Glover as co-director, who came in and did some deep dramaturgical work and has helped hugely in making the show a proper piece of theatre.

As more and more people joined the effort, it became progressively clearer what the story was that we were telling. It’s been an extraordinarily collaborative process. We ended up doing a run at Summerhall at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2025, a couple of one-off shows at Soho Theatre, and now, for the first time, the show feels like it has its proper home: a three-week run at Park Theatre in London. The first real chance for it to find its feet and its audience.

And the show’s audience matters a lot. Because at some point in that development journey, we realised that the ‘Goblin’ character, who initially just lived inside the storytelling as this metaphysical familiar, an imaginary friend that the teenage protagonist talks to, should actually be played by the audience collectively. My performance style as a comedian has always involved talking to my audience anyway.

What happens in this show is that the audience is invited to fall in love with this fifteen-year-old boy – the sweetest, good, naive kid – and then watch as he grows up and gradually shuts them out, drifting further and further from his sense of self and goodness. The audience, as Goblin, gets to feel that loss in real time. By the end, we have to reckon with what that means: what it feels like to watch someone you care about become someone you don’t quite recognise, and whether or not it’s ever possible to return to that connected sense of what’s right.

I don’t think there’s an easy answer. But I think it’s one of the most important questions we’re trying to ask here. And I’m thrilled, finally, to be asking it in a proper London home.

Goblin runs at Park Theatre (Park90), London, from 17 November–5 December 2026. Tickets £15–£18, available at https://parktheatre.co.uk/events/goblin/

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