It’s been almost a decade since Mump and Smoot, the legendary Canadian clowns of horror, hung up their red noses for good—or so they thought. The pair, who have been described as everything from “the postapocalyptic Smothers Brothers” to “a Martian Abbott and Costello”, established a cult following, working their way from Fringe festival sellouts in the early 1990s to national tours at mainstream theatres, most recently with 2002’s Flux. But now, they are back with a new show. Cracked reunites performers Mike Kennard (Mump) and John Turner (Smoot) with Karen Hines, who has directed all their shows, and composer Greg Morrison, who created music for Flux and 1999’s Something Else.

In the eight years since Flux, a darkly comic camping trip that played at Vancouver’s Waterfront Theatre, all four artists have been keeping busy with other projects: Kennard relocated to Edmonton, where he teaches acting at the University of Alberta; Turner moved to Manitoulin Island, Ontario, where he runs the Clown Farm, offering workshops to both novice clowns and seasoned theatre artists; Hines, now based in Calgary, has been garnering awards for two short films featuring her unforgettable pixie of doom, Pochsy, who has also been immortalized in book form; and Morrison cowrote the music and lyrics for The Drowsy Chaperone, the Canadian musical that dazzled Broadway in 2006, netting Morrison (and cowriter Lisa Lambert) a Tony award.

Despite geographic distance and the long gap between shows, the artists have clicked right back into their shared groove. Kennard and Turner got the idea for Cracked a year ago and were joined by Hines and Morrison last winter to develop the show during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. “It felt like a rock-band reunion,” says Morrison, “people coming from all over the country to get together and jam again.” He’s on the phone from Edmonton, where the company is preparing for a four-night workshop run in advance of the world premiere at the Cultch next Wednesday (May 26). “Being in Banff really crystallized how right it felt. There was that instant connection again; it could have been last week.”

Morrison met Hines when she was performing with Toronto’s Second City improv troupe and he was working as the touring company’s musical director—a job that gave him invaluable experience in going with the flow. That’s crucial with Kennard and Turner, whose gift for working the moment can transform even technical glitches into opportunities for memorable theatre. “I think it’s part of the magic of John and Mike in their Mump and Smoot world,” says Morrison. “There’s safety in that, knowing that if something goes drastically wrong, you’re in good hands.”

Still, these aren’t the kind of clowns you’d hire for your kid’s birthday party. Mump and Smoot wear conventional clown noses, but the similarities end there. These clowns have horns, the paint on their faces suggests scars and flames, and the shows usually feature lots of blood. Mump and Smoot come from a planet called Ummo, worship a god called Ummo, and speak Ummonian, a form of gibberish. Smoot, who is sweetly innocent but somewhat accident-prone, is constantly testing the patience of the bossy, supercilious Mump, and the pair often find themselves in situations that are genuinely scary.

Morrison won’t give too many details about Cracked, but he characterizes it as both funny and reflective. The show’s promotional material suggests that their heretofore unassailable relationships—with Ummo and with each other—come under fire in this show, threatening their lives.

“It won’t be foreign to people who know Mump and Smoot,” he says, “but it’s a progression.” Morrison also promises a few musical surprises.

Exactly how does one write music for horror clowns, anyway? “You kind of want to navigate the clichés,” Morrison offers. “I love [Alfred Hitchcock film composer] Bernard Herrmann, and I love the Psycho violin shrieks, and sometimes those things are really effective as just a cultural musical reference point. Certainly in my background with Second City, that would be something that you would exploit,” he says. “But with Mump and Smoot I don’t do that. I kind of avoid those because of the psychology of these guys: they’re horror clowns, but they create their own world. So to make it original and specific to them is always the best way to go.”

Let’s hope Cracked isn’t our last opportunity to visit that uniquely funny and frightening world. “I knew [after Flux] they would always perform again whether it was together or solo,” says Morrison. “I mean, they could continue to teach and direct and do all that stuff, but I think there’s a part of any real performer that can’t give it up. And they’re real performers.”