Unpredictable fun in relationship battles
Grubby Little Mitts: Hello, Hi
Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) until 28 August
Making explicit what was latent in Grubby Little Mitts’ selftitled Fringe debut (the sense of them as a couple), if they have a thread running through their second show, it’s on the ebbs and flows of a relationship. An early skit features a tortuously lengthy asking out of someone, while a later effort plays with the toxicity of Rosie Nicholls and Sullivan Beau Brown contemplating splitting up.
Their opener, in which they lose control in a Pandora’s Box scenario of escalating violence, threatens a more formally daring and manic hour, and their closer is a heavily primed, bad-taste splash through Singin’ In The Rain. But in between these
extremes there’s more of a sense of Grubby Little Mitts working through their on and offstage dynamic.
Their title sketch erupts into carnality. And there’s repeated declarations of love in successive crisis scenarios, with the rhythm of these quickies perhaps suggesting more of a payoff than what actually transpires. But one returning character, Father Hen – a sort of dufferish, yet randy, yet sexually naïve old cockerel in a (children’s?)
television series – invariably amuses.
It almost goes without saying that Nicholls and Brown have an easy chemistry, but the seamlessness with which they flit between being the protagonist or subverter of their little playlets, means you can rarely predict where any sketch will go next. Hello, Hi has a warm, loveable centre and the duo’s foregrounding of their coupledom gives it extra frisson.