THE GOOD DAD (A LOVE STORY) Comes to Edinburgh

Inspired by real-life events from the 1980s, this haunting family drama will see one actor take on the roles of a mother and her identical twin daughters, Donna and Carol. Nominated for Lead Performance, New Play and Best Director at the Off West End Awards 2021, The Good Dad is presented in association with the charity Victim Support. 

Extensively researched by award-winning playwright and former academic Gail Louw, The Good Dad explores and explains – by means of fragmented flashbacks and shifting narratives – how and why Donna is in prison for the murder of her father, in the process unpacking a complex web of exploitation and complicity, dysfunctional family dynamics and flawed institutions.  

Actor Sarah Lawrie says: “It is a peculiar privilege to give voice to this story which sheds light on the under-reported yet painfully prevalent issue of sexual abuse within families. Gail has approached these difficult themes with a nuanced and informed understanding of her subject matter, and I am glad that the play is continuing to reach new audiences and to raise awareness of Victim Support's year-round, nationwide work.” 

Gail Louw is an award-winning writer with plays performed both in the UK and across three continents in the USA, South Africa and Australia. Twelve of her professionally produced plays have been published in three collections by Oberon Books. She has won multiple awards for her writing, including an Argus Angel award for Blonde Poison, Best New Play at Brighton Festival for Duwayne and a Naledi award in South Africa for Miss Dietrich Regret. Her previous Fringe show And This Is My Friend Mr Laurel, co-written with Jeffrey Holland, was at the Pleasance in 2015. 

Director Anthony Shrubsall is a freelance director, founder member of And Tomorrow Theatre Company and former academic. Also at this year's Fringe, he directs Lear Alone. Other work includes A Boy Called Porro (Pleasance Theatre), An Absence Of (Old Court, Windsor, and winner of the Kenneth Branagh new writers award), It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play (0ld Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham), The Gin Chronicles series (ArtsSpace Edinburgh), and Richard Tyrone Jones's Big Heart, adapted into a series for BBC Radio 4. He has directed two short cross disciplinary promotional films of Shakespeare works: Macbeth with Terry Deary, author of the Horrible Histories and, Romeo and Juliet with Tate Modern. 

Sarah Lawrie is Off West End Award-nominated for The Good Dad (Old Red Lion, Hope Theatre & Golden Goose Theatre). Other stage credits include The Mirror Crack'd (Original Theatre/UK Tour), Dom: The Play (Theatre Royal Windsor/Bill Kenwright Ltd), Boeing Boeing (Oldham Coliseum), Love, Loss & What I Wore, Improbable Fiction, and Ten Times Table (Mill at Sonning), Restoration (Salisbury Playhouse), Pal Joey and Smoking With Lulu (Citizens Theatre, Glasgow), The Life & Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Chichester Festival Theatre, West End & Toronto),Tales From Hollywood, Phedre and Great Expectations (Perth Theatre), Volpone (Theatre Babel), Love Bites (Southwark Playhouse), Frankenstein (The Space Theatre), Jack's Goodbye (Everyword Festival, Liverpool Everyman) and Shutters: A Lesbian Rock Opera (Clapham Omnibus). Radio includes Something Understood, The Machine Stops, The Petticoat Vote and Red Lines (all for BBC Radio 4). Sarah has also recorded two audio dramas for Big Finish Productions and has just narrated her first audiobook, A Man at War (Audible UK). 

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