Me. You. And the Fit Bloke Next Door. The Courtyard Theatre
At the start of July we set out to bring you at least 100 inteviews for Camden Fringe 2025, to give a real taste of the sheer range of topics and ideas that this festival brings you. Here is the final one. So did we make our 100? Of course we did, in fact you can find around 130 interviews from the over 400 shows on offer this year across the four weeks of the festival that started on Monday. You can find all our interviews here, and now it’s time for us to actually go and see some of these shows ourselves!
Our final interview for this year’s festival finds us chatting to writer Pip Carew and performer Lottie Burgess, who plays Ruth in Me. You. And the Fit Bloke Next Door. This comedy takes a swipe at many of the issues facing young adults right now, with the cost of living and relationships certainly in there.
The play comes to The Courtyard Theatre from 19 to 23 August, tickets available here.
What can audiences expect from the show?
Me. You. And the Fit Bloke Next Door. is a contemporary love-triangle comedy-drama that tackles themes of queerness, infertility, and the rising cost of living. It’s a sexy state-of-the-nation play about a disempowered couple who develop an unhealthy interest in their landlord. Expect snide remarks over glasses of wine, farcical exchanges, and miscommunication with mortal consequences.
Is Camden Fringe going to be the show’s first time on stage, or have you already performed elsewhere?
We premiered Me. You. And the Fit Bloke Next Door. in Manchester this June as two preview shows upstairs at the Kings Arms in Salford. Hopefully, by the time this goes out, the show will have been a hit in Manchester and we can brag about how much Northern audiences love us!
What was your inspiration behind the show?
For the past year these questions have been niggling at my brain: what do we owe each other? What’s our debt to one another as people, neighbours or lovers? In these times of economic turmoil, it’s natural to become more guarded or stingy with your relationships. You can’t afford to go out as much or see friends, so your circle becomes narrower, and your dependence on those inside the circle deepens. I wanted to explore how that suffocating feeling can affect our romantic relationships and how difficult it becomes to keep secrets in an environment like that. As someone who spends a lot of time resenting their landlord, I also thought it would be an interesting, moral twenty-first-century dilemma to determine what would happen if you were to fall in love with your landlord.
What was it that drew you to this show and role?
Lottie: Having previously worked with our writer Pip, I knew this play would be as complex, hilarious and touching as her earlier projects, and so I was delighted to take on the role of Ruth.
Because Pip’s great at writing characters that teeter between being likeable and unlikeable, the audience (me when i read the script) is left unsure of how they feel, or how they should feel, towards them. These types of characters are the most rewarding (and challenging) to play, and I was most drawn to finding this balance in Ruth.
Although she pretends to know exactly what she wants, it’s evident throughout the play that Ruth has no idea what she’s doing. This sense of instability exists within her relationship, her finances and how she sees herself. I think these themes are what make the play so current – I have no doubt most young women in the UK right now are feeling like Ruth. However, the play tackles these topics from a completely new perspective, one that the audience certainly won’t have anticipated. It’s fun, as an actor, to explore such familiar dynamics and themes whilst knowing how they are… unexpectedly… resolved.
What brought you all together?
Downstairs Productions was established in 2024. We were working on our one-woman feminist show Anti-Heroine at the Edinburgh Fringe. After receiving a 4-star Scotsman review and taking the show on to the Camden Fringe, we felt an enormous sense of momentum to carry on. From there, the team has been non-stop with this new project. We are a hardworking, close-knit group of devoted and kind producers, directors and actors brought together by a common goal of creating taboo-breaking, female-led stories and making them accessible to everyone. This show is about the expense of living (amongst other things). It is imperative to us that we represent those values of accessibility in the shows we make and in our company ethos. We are also all very close friends, I think our drive comes from our mutual respect for one another and the knowledge that at the end of our run we can all celebrate together over a pint.
How important is audience interaction to you?
Arguably the most important part of putting on a show! I’ve always been distracted by gossip and hearing what people think of the characters you’ve written is the most fun conversation a writer could have. When I write something that will be performed in front of strangers, I’m constantly considering what will keep them engaged in the characters’ lives. Working out what the most scandalous or morally conflicting thing a person could do and finding ways to give a character motivation to do that thing convincingly is a difficult challenge to pull off. You only know if you’ve gotten away with it when you speak to audience members afterwards. I want the audience of this show to come away with strong opinions about which characters were hard done by, which characters got their comeuppance, who they felt for and who they fell for.
If you had to describe your show as a colour what would it be?
‘Recession orange’ if such a colour exists. I’ve heard a lot about ‘Recession Blonde’ coming into fashion because people can no longer afford to dye their roots. I think this play is the equivalent of painting your walls bright orange, then hating your decision but not being able to afford orange paint so the interior of your house eventually crumbles into a dull, rusted orange. When designing the set, our designer took inspiration from Dario Fo as our play is reminiscent of Italian farce. The cover of ‘Death of Anarchist’ is bright orange therefore that orange seems like the perfect shade to embody the anti-capitalist themes in the script.
If budget or reality was not an issue, what’s the one piece of scenery/set you’d love to have in your show?
Well, not to give too much away, but there’s a pretty pivotal scene involving a balcony in the play. If money were no issue, we’d be constructing a balcony that would make Juliet seethe with jealousy. Then again, the play is about making the most of what you have, so perhaps it’s authentic that we’re being resourceful with our scenery.
What’s the most valuable piece of advice you’ve received during your career, and how has it influenced your work on this show?
My dad says, “there’s enough people who will give you criticism in life, you need to enjoy the wins.” I, like the rest of the population, am too hard on myself. I get distracted being self critical and can miss how wonderful the process of staging a play can be. It’s a very vulnerable thing to put your writing in front of people and trust others to make those ideas a reality. But it doesn’t help to be all “oh I’m not good enough, the script’s rubbish, I should’ve used ChatGPT.” No. You have to back yourself and make sure your team knows how capable you all are of putting on an entertaining, thought-provoking show and enjoying yourselves while doing so. Otherwise, what’s the point in doing anything?
Many thanks to Pip and Lottie for being our final guests in this year’s Camden Fringe interviews.
You can catch Me. You. And the Fit Bloke Next Door. at The Courtyard Theatre between Tuesday 19 and Saturday 23 August.
