PPP: Dookin’ Oot
★★★★☆ Beautifully vulgar
Traverse: Tue 4 – Sat 8 Mar 2025
Review by Hugh Simpson
Dookin’ Oot by Éimi Quinn, the first in the new season of Play, Pie and a Pint from Òran Mór at the Traverse, is a very funny and deceptively serious piece.
Co-presented with Aberdeen Performing Arts, Johnstone Town Hall and Paisley Town Hall, the play features 70-year-old Easterhouse resident Diane (Janette Foggo), who feels that her existence is ‘no being alive, it’s jist no being deid.’
Janette Foggo and Helen McAlpine in Dookin’ Oot. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
But, while Diane could take her dog to the vet to be put to sleep, she would have to go to Switzerland to end her own life. Lack of money makes this impossible – until her carer Julie (Helen McAlpine) sets herself up as a dominatrix on OnlyFans to help her out.
The constraints of the PPP running time mean that rendering some of these events credible needs a considerable leap of the imagination – something the characters themselves seem only too aware of. However, there’s so much scabrous comic energy and vitality in the dialogue that the play has a real momentum.
reflective
Towards the end, admittedly, it becomes more reflective, and the illogicalities become more obvious. In compensation, there are some telling points about assisted dying, and how women become regarded as invisible as they age, delivered in a demotic Glaswegian that pulls no punches.
Janette Foggo, Kyle Gardiner and Helen McAlpine in Dookin’ Oot. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
Foggo in particular is tremendous as Diane, railing against the body she no longer recognises, that all her pals are gone and her son’s an arsehole, and ‘all that Bible pish’. McAlpine is also extremely impressive as Julie, while Kyle Gardiner’s postie Connor, the women’s confidant-cum-accomplice, has considerable comic charm.
suitably breezy
Jennifer Dick’s direction is pacey, economical and suitably breezy, while Heather Grace Currie’s compact design works beautifully.
Ross Kirkland’s lighting and Ross Nurney’s sound design are spot-on, with the latter spotlighting some ludicrous (but only slightly exaggerated) local radio adverts.
Janette Foggo and Helen McAlpine in Dookin’ Oot. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
The whole thing is very much in the variety tradition. While this works very well, it does threaten to become a little too end-of-the-pier at times, tipping over into both the overly lavatorial and the needlessly sentimental.
The sharpness of the writing always pulls it back, however, allied to performances of unusual spirit.
Running time: One hour (no interval)
Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge St, EH1 2ED
Tuesday 4 – Saturday 8 March 2025
Daily at 1.00 pm
Details and tickets: Book here.
Kyle Gardiner, Janette Foggo and Helen McAlpine in Dookin’ Oot. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
ENDS
