Two “Creepy Boys” shuffle onto the stage in sleeping bags as gastropods with vagina mouths. They regurgitate and eat a spoonful of beans, sing a song about Donald Duck and his lack of trousers, strip to reveal duck-like underwear with a strategically cut hole, offer the audience sweets, and eventually unleash a pantomime horse that shoots us in the face. Rate this experience out of five. It feels like a mad request.
Beneath the mania, however, lies an Edinburgh Comedy Award–nominated piece of abstract performance art about a desire for nothing: innocence, physical substance without connotation — the thought equivalent of slugs. The opening song announces this mission plainly: the show is about nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. But achieving nothingness is harder than it looks, and the struggle to do so fuels this wild ride.
Through an anxiety-fuelled stream of puppet shows, songs, sketches, and even a conversation with a paper Joni Mitchell, the Creepy Boys repeatedly demonstrate that everything is connected to something — and not just something neutral, but something politically or socially charged. A slideshow contrasts an egg (nothing) with a battery hen (something), and a person dressed as a ghost (nothing) with the same image altered by the addition of a pointed white hat (something). Even arbitrary physical movements performed by S.E. Grummet are instinctively ranked by the audience as more or less “something.”
Grummet’s trans identity becomes a particularly pointed example of this “something-ification.” They cannot simply sing a song without it becoming a “trans song.” In one moment, the duo is prancing with their trousers off; in the next, erupting into despair at the impossibility of being neutral. If they are not the same as each other, then their bodies carry meaning, implication, and politics. Nothingness becomes unreachable.
The visual elements of the show really elevate it. There’s a handmade aesthetic that is fun and, ironically, quite sweet. A projection of a miniature paper set, manipulated by either one of the Creepy Boys while the other acts in the scene, has real charm. It’s detailed and nicely crafted — the antithesis of AI-generated, soulless fodder.
That said, some stylistic choices feel slightly dated: colourful geometric shapes and those specific cargo trousers they wear hark back to 2021, and sticking googly eyes on everything — including the genitals — is slightly reminiscent of a 90s art school project. At times, the humour veers into mild cringe — calling guns “pew-pews,” a childishness of tone creeping in occasionally, and a tad too much screaming. Alongside some of the wildness on stage, it may lose some people. The show is always intelligent and forceful, but occasionally its appeal thins. It could do with a facelift for 2026.
One of the final scenes lands particularly well. Beginning with comic timing and exaggerated sincerity, they pivot to gun violence in America. The audience teeters between laughter and a sudden “oh God, I should not be laughing” feeling. That is the central danger the show exposes: innocent fun can become a profound difficulty at the drop of a pair of cargos.
Perhaps the purest “nothing” in the piece is what the performers gain from it. By their own admission, this is hardly a transferable skill. It will not make them cash-rich or bring them fame. Are they even doing anything to change the world? The show ends with a video of the pair burrowed underground together, hopeless, before releasing the gun-toting pantomime horse.
It’s definitely impactful, and the audience response feels divided — some fully immersed, others visibly unsure. Outside performance-art circles, its appeal will inevitably be limited. But SLUGS commits fiercely to its premise, is completely cohesive, and achieves what it sets out to do. Whether you admire it or recoil from it, it doesn’t beat around the bush. They don’t ask for stars; they ask for opinion, and they are thorough in putting their point across.
Writers: S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger
Published with The Reviews Hub
Rosie Wood 
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