Writer: John McKay
Director: Liz Carruthers
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The year is 1985. Live Aid is happening, Margaret Thatcher is celebrating six years in Downing Street and Back to the Future is the big hit on cinema screens. It is also the year in which Scottish writer John McKay’s short play is set.
Not seen in London for 35 years, the play was intended to be staged alongside the premiere of Sunny Boy, a sequel set in 2023. However, due to unfortunate circumstances, this has proved to be impossible and the revival now stands alone. It is a supernatural comedy, rooted firmly in its own place (Edinburgh) and time.
Eck (Angus Miller) is a young man who is embarking on a career in broadcasting. While preparing himself for an interview with the BBC, he is shocked by the arrival of his father, Willie (Liam Brennan), who has been dead for 12 years. McKay makes up new rules for the powers of ghosts, giving us one who is visible to everyone and can eat. Dead Dad follows startled Eck around, turning the job interview into chaos, making unhelpful interjections on a trip to the supermarket and ruining his son’s hopes on a first date.
As a generation gap comedy, this is all fine, if a little predictable, but McKay uses Dad’s 12-year absence to widen the gap with jokes that are very specific to their own era. Dad is bemused by 1980s fashion trends and health food fads and he has no idea who Thatcher is. These gags are mining the same seam as those revolving around time travel in 1985’s hit film and, from the perspective of 38 years later, they are very much back to the past
Director Liz Carruthers allows the two actors only a wooden chair as their single prop and they are both terrific, making it such a pity that much of their material has gone so far beyond its sell-by date. Hopefully, we shall not have to wait too long to see Sunny Boy, but, for now, the valiant efforts of Miller and Brennan to give the kiss of life to the earlier play all seem rather pointless.
Performance date: 5 October 2023
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