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The Evil Doers
Tracky is a teenage heavy metal fan with an alcoholic mother, a taxi driver father and a best friend who's after the loanshark who's after her father. The father has started a new business as a tour-guide, and his crazy optimism deeply antagonizes his daughter. All day long she sets about sabotaging him - furious that he is unable to solve the fundamental problem in their lives - his alcoholic wife and her alcoholic mother. Throughout the mayhem of the day she grabs onto his coat-tail and will not be shaken.
The result is a chaotic comic odyssey through the streets of a modern city which concludes in a violent epiphany.
First produced at the Bush Theatre, London, on 30th August 1990, it won a Time Out Award, a Plays and Players' Critics Award, and that year's Charrington London Fringe Award for Best Play. It was directed by Simon Usher and designed by Anthony Lamble. The cast was Sharon Muircroft (Tracky Doak), Katy Murphy (Susan), Tom Mannion (Sammy Doak), Douglas Henshall (Tex), Lucy Aston (Lucy / Tourist) and Alison Peebles (Agnes Doak)
Quotes
"Uproariously funny.. . He has a sharp eye for flaky characterisation and a wonderful ear for quirky vernacular dialogue, a sawn-off language of violent verbal collisions, like a pile-up on the motorway… We never quite stop laughing but it becomes increasingly painful to do so, and I suspect that no-one will be able to watch the bruising final scene without physically flinching."
Daily Telegraph
“A gorgeously enjoyable play. As in the comedies of Ben Jonson and Middleton, the hunt for money gives the play its structure. Like Jonson and Middleton also, Hannan owns a penetrating eye for tricks of character and an equally sharp ear... A world of uncertain egos where the characters bounce off each other like bumper cars, powered by sources beyond their control.”
The Independent
“A vicious and idiosyncratic city comedy.”