DEAD DAD DOG and SUNNY BOY Come to the Finborough Theatre

John McKay’s Dead Dad Dog, the Scottish comic smash hit from 1988, in a double bill with the world premiere of a specially commissioned brand new sequel, Sunny Boy opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season from 3 October 2023, prior to a run at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of their 60th Anniversary celebrations. 

Dead Dad Dog

Edinburgh in the mid 1980s. 

Young Alexander Dundee – Eck to his friends – is sharply ambitious, sexed-up and in a hurry, and eagerly awaiting the job interview which will change his life. 

Little does he anticipate the sudden appearance of the spectre of his long dead father, Wullie, a lugubrious ex-Hoover salesman – a flare-trousered 1970s picture of Caledonian cheesiness. 

When they discover they can’t be further than a few feet apart without painful consequences, Eck is plunged into a blackly comic nightmare as he tries to survive the day with his dead father in tow…

Storming the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1988, and immediately transferring to The Royal Court Theatre, Dead Dad Dog was a comic smash hit, embodying the new Scottish optimism of its time – loud-mouthed, hip and sharply-suited.

Sunny Boy

It’s 2023.

Now Eck is older than the ghost of his dead father, and has a troublesome 22 year old son of his own, Bob, whom he is dropping in on as part of his plan to return – the conquering hero – to his homeland.
 
After all, Eck’s not old yet, is he? And he’s a much better father than Wullie ever was, right? And no one’s haunted by the ghosts of old Scotland anymore, right? 

Fast, scandalous, and heartfelt, new play Sunny Boy takes the world of Dead Dad Dog and turns it – like contemporary Scotland – arse upwards. 

In a blur of music, fast talk, unexpected nakedness, and poorly judged fashion choices, Sunny Boy twangs the nerve of permanent adolescence and parental guilt that is so familiar to the 1980s generation – who were supposed to grow up to inherit the world, and somehow failed to do so. 

This production contains strong language, sexual references and sensitive subject matter.

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