The early 1970s in East Belfast were a confusing time and place to be for a young, inquisitive nine-year-old as Sam Robinson’s Guy Mitchell’s Dog’s Dead – Pass it on illustrates with exhilarating freshness and vitality at the Lyric Theatre.
A collaboration between Cock & Hens Productions, an amateur company that pays its actors and crew, and professional company Bright Umbrella, Robinson’s one-hander neatly collides the looking outwards of childhood innocence with an adult world turning in on, and against, itself with bilious sectarian ire.
Set in the Ballybeen estate—a stone’s throw from Stormont and at one time Western Europe’s largest such development—where mixed-religion occupation soon gave way to it being a stronghold of the Loyalist paramilitary UDA, it is a carefully curated exercise in nostalgia. Indulging in a child’s wonder at a suddenly larger, more complex world that seems within tantalising reach, it admirably refuses any rose-tinted gloss or arch sentimentality.
At its centre is Sammy, a gangly, somewhat hyper child, as unsure of himself as he is certain that there is a world elsewhere, albeit one that seems as elusive as it is enticing. Robinson’s script walks the line between front-cloth comedy—much of Sammy’s monologue, populated by wonderfully caricatured family members, friends and assorted grown-ups, would make for a cracking stand-up routine—and political commentary with commendable balance.
In an assured performance, Kealan McAllister brings a gawky, awkward charm to Sammy, conjuring a multitude of other characters with bravura, Dickensian variety to blend the grotesque, the comic and the poignant. Admirable, too, for so young an actor, is his deft working and control of an eagerly engaged audience.
Trevor Gill’s energetic direction matches McAllister’s natural ebullience, the use of projected news footage and images from the period inking in the encroaching shadows that will force Sammy to grow up well before he should.
The uncredited set is minimal but cleverly used, pumping music of the period anachronistically laced with punk anthems proving an apt soundtrack.
Another feather in the cap for Bright Umbrella, at whose Sanctuary Theatre Robinson’s play was first seen in 2024; the short run at the Lyric has a handful of seats left. When Guy Mitchell’s Dog’s Dead – Pass it on returns, as it surely will, book early.