When you hear they’re putting on a comedy about two men running a Glasgow ice-cream van, you think immediately of the city’s notorious turf wars. Back in the 1980s, rival gangs used the hiding-in-plain-sight network of vans to distribute drugs and other contraband to their customers. Things turned nasty with a fatal arson attack on the family of one of the drivers, leaving five people dead.
Playwright Laurie Motherwell cannot pretend none of that happened, but in Sean And Daro Flake It ‘Til They Make It, he has fun playing with expectations. This is a story about a Glasgow ice-cream van, but it is not that story.
“I didn’t want it to be another story about two guys struggling for money who sell drugs,” he says. “There is a twist on it, but it’s not that… We’re so presumptive about certain characters and it’s nice to explore them in a different way and for them to have a higher moral ground than the audience.” [READ MORE]