Comic play Death Ship 666! was one of the big success stories at the Edinburgh Fringe in the summer. Despite an early morning start time, word of mouth about the show quickly spread to the extent it was soon standing room only. The comedy has now transferred to London for a run on the big stage.

We caught up with the creators, the Clarkson Twins and Gemma Hurley, to find out more...

Hi. What is Death Ship 666 exactly?

Death Ship 666! is the epic disaster parody play, where classic movies like Titanic and Airplane! collide in a multi-rolling voyage of explosive comedy.

We follow the doomed crew and passengers aboard a half-built cruise ship's voyage to the Bermuda Triangle, as our desperate heroine falls in love with the ship's dashing, yet troubled, Architect.

But little do our lovers know, elaborate plots to destroy Death Ship are conspiring against everyone on board. In the chaos that ensues, it's woman versus child, human versus bear and ship versus time.

With six actors playing over thirty different characters, this high-octane fast paced show has been likened to the long running West End comedy The 39 Steps.

Who is behind the show?

The show was written by the three of us: Michael Clarkson, Paul Clarkson and Gemma Hurley. Michael and Gemma met at the University of Reading by singing Phantom of the Opera to each other under a stage whilst the real performance went on above them and have been writing together ever since. Michael and Paul have been identical twins for 25 years now. Together we are Box Step Productions, and have created our online hit comedy short films Fellowship of the Ringwraiths and Star Wars Disney - the Musical, amassing over a quarter of a million views in under a year.

... As an aside, we love your Star Wars Disney musical (one of the songs from it is above). Are you fans of musicals? If so, what is the greatest musical of all time?

We do love musicals! We would have to agree on either Book of Mormon (being very similar in humour to our own production) or Phantom of the Opera for pure theatricality. Who doesn't love a psycho in a mask singing whilst he hangs and tries to murder people?

Death Ship, however, has only one signature number to express the complete anarchy of the ship sinking.

Are Box Step Productions going to make any more videos then? Given the success of Fellowship of the Ringwraiths, perhaps something Hobbit-based?

We're planning on making The Fellowship of the Ringwraiths a trilogy to accompany both The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogy. We think that the Ringwraiths are actually quite deep characters and have a lot to offer audiences. It's hard chasing the one ring all your afterlife - what happens when it's no longer there?

Back to Death Ship, could you tell us more about how you cast the show?

After an intense writing period, we auditioned complete randomers for the parts in Death Ship 666!, and were greatly impressed with the talent we've found. Carrie Marx (comedy actress and one third of The Segue Sisters) multi-rolls the most parts in Death Ship, taking the part of the ten year old detective Holly Hobby.

Harrie Hayes, mostly seen in every commercial on television, is part of sketch group Zazu and improvises with Battle Acts, and is taking the role of Grandma (Kate Winslet's character in Titanic).

Lydia Hourihan, Andrew Utley and Matthias Penman all originate from a theatre background and demonstrate their hilarious talents in the show!

For our Jermyn Street Christmas run we have special guest actors Rachel Parris (of Austentatious fame) and Anna Morris (Outnumbered, Georgina's Wedding Blog) taking the roles of Grandma and the Rich Lady respectively. We approached them with the parts when two of our original cast members were unable to do the Christmas slot there.

The cast are brilliant, and work cohesively together to pull off such a slick, fast-paced show.

Death Ship 666 was a big success at the Edinburgh Fringe. That must have been a good feeling. What do you think the most important factor was in it being a triumph?

As soon as we said "Airplane! meets Titanic" to people at the Fringe, it created an immediate impression of what our show would be like. Word of mouth helped a lot after that. We were also lucky in that at 10:45am there's very little competition for shows of our nature. There were many kids shows on at that time, and Death Ship appealed to parents who then dragged their kids to our show.

We had people coming back 6 or 7 times in the space of a week and a half! Also, our play is something that isn't really being done with comedy at the moment. True, there are a lot of improvised shows that parody particular themes and content - but we get compared a lot to things like Book of Mormon and The 39 Steps. We're the only British play apart from The 39 Steps that has taken filmic inspiration and parodied it in our own particular style. We love parody films.

We were so ecstatic with all of the 5 star reviews. The Express also picked us out as best of the Edinburgh Fringe, which was great to read about.

On your journey to creating the show, did you learn anything new about the craft of comedy?

Just how organic and changeable it can all be. Through audience reactions we can identify the stronger comedy moments of Death Ship and workshop scenes that weren't working to try and unlock the comedy of the scene. Having come from a filmic comedy background, having the opportunity to change content has been extremely liberating and just allows the show to grow from strength to strength. We started in London in June, and have probably done 4 re-writes since then.

We've also learned how much humans can sweat. The show is so fast and intense that our actors look like they've run a marathon after the show's finished.

So, as we've touched upon, you're now performing the show at some big London theatres...

Having been likened a lot with The 39 Steps and with Book of Mormon's energy, to be one step closer geographically to those shows means a lot. We just can't believe we've gone from no show in April, to West End 8 months later (including full houses every day at Edinburgh Festival).

Has the show changed in any way from the Edinburgh version?

We've completely stepped up to bring a larger, more engaging show. We've enhanced the physical theatre elements and hired a whole fantastic team of set/sound/lighting designers to really bring out everything the show has to offer. Marc Specter has designed us some pretty incredible movie quality sound effects which we can't wait for people to see... hear, for people to hear!

What do you think the long-term future for the show is? Could you tour it? Or perhaps come up with a sequel, Death Ship 667?

Haha - we were considering Death Ship 666 2 - where James Cameron tries to resurrect the sunken Death Ship and make a film about it. The logline would be "some things should stay sunk".

We're currently toying with a sci-fi parody called Star Ship 666! to stay in the same vein as Death Ship - but who knows!

The thought of touring the show crossed our minds, but we're looking to stay closer to London at the moment.

Thanks for your time and good luck with the shows!

Death Ship 666! is playing at The Jermyn Street Theatre in London until 15th December. Details

Death Ship 666! will also be at The Leicester Square Theatre on the 19th January and 23rd February 2014. Tickets

You can follow the show on Twitter (@boxstepcomedy) and Facebook