Having recently completed a tour of their show Hello, Hi, Grubby Little Mitts – Sullivan Brown and Rosie Nicholls – are back with a new show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. The award-winning sketch comedy duo are known for their signature surrealism embellished with rapid dialogue, musical interludes and aggressively red aesthetic screaming from handmade props.
We caught up with them to hear about the show and about whose home some of those props may now reside.
Q&A with Grubby Little Mitts (Sullivan Brown and Rosie Nicholls)
How does it feel to be returning to Edinburgh Fringe?
How wonderful to be back in Edinburgh with our third magnum opus Grubby Little Mitts: Eyes Closed, Mouths Open – it’s our third year and we are bringing another brand new show! We have taken a bit of a creative risk with this show, so while a little nervous we are mostly excited to get it in front of an audience and get going. It feels great to be gearing up for the fringe again – we love Edinburgh and we love the festival.
What can you tell us about your show and its inspiration?
Before we started creating this show, we decided to move away from the fairly standard sketch show format we have become known for and create a universe of characters and scenes inside a framework and world – so that’s what makes this show a bit different from our other shows. We have been inspired by the song It’s Raining Men by the Weather Girls and, as usual, we have built the show around an epic finale. So while we are doing something different, there are still the grubby pillars of comedy that will feel familiar.
How do you think audiences will react to the show?
We hope they’ll be delighted and horrified in equal measure, or it wouldn’t be a Grubby Little Mitts show. Many of the sketches are slow burn, some are just so stupid it’s barely worth explaining, and there is a degree of mess which is sure to be divisive.
How have you been preparing for the festival?
We’ve had two weeks of rehearsals with our directors Dom Allen and Simon Maeder, where we’ve been doing a lot of rewrites, blocking, devising and general working the material. That’s been great fun. Rosie has been busy designed the props and set, and we have also been working with a fantastic sound designer this year, Josh Anio Grigg – so that’s all coming together. We have three previews in London (24-26 July) so that will set us up for the festival nicely.
Will you get a chance to enjoy the rest of the festival?
We love to see as many shows as we can while we’re up at the fringe, as well as taking part in the nightlife and all the amazing food in Edinburgh as well. We love a ceilidh, we love a night out, we love the artist bar and the Assembly Gardens as well – so we will definitely we taking part of the festival!
Do you have any Fringe anecdotes you can share with us?
In our debut year, we were about five minutes from opening the house, and Rosie bumped into the actor Brian Cox on her way to the loo – he was looking at the what’s on board, and she invited him to the show. When Rosie came back into the theatre, Sullivan rushed over to say he had met Brian Cox while she was in the loo – so we had both invited him in the space of five minutes. We both then scrambled to make sure he could get in as we were close to being sold out, which he did, and then we did the show to probably one of the best crowds ever. It was incredibly surreal. The finale of the show involved launching a thousand hand painted eyeballs at the audience while we danced to Can’t Take My Eyes Off You – after the show, Mr Cox admitted that he stole not one but two of the eyeballs. Truly an amazing day!
Grubby Little Mitts: Eyes Closed, Mouths Open is at Assembly George Square from 31 July to 26 August
