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Educating Ronnie 


Assembly George Square
3 stars
When Joe Douglas visited his Auntie Marie in Uganda on his gap year a 
decade ago, it opened up the then eighteen year old's eyes to a world 
of possibilities. One of these came in the form of Ronnie, a boy of his 
own age he instantly hit it off with. When Douglas returned to the UK, 
Ronnie sent him an email, asking him for a small amount of money to 
help get him through school. Another email followed, asking for more, 
and so it went, with assorted university fees, hospital bills and 
emergency payments, which combined almost hit the twenty grand mark. 
Bearing in mind that while Douglas was forking out all this, he was 
going through his own penny-pinching student years, and could have done 
with the extra cash himself.

By transferring his real-life experience into a very candid monologue, 
Douglas has laid what is either a divine faith in people or spectacular 
naivete bare in an honest and self-deprecatory fashion. Where the 
subject might sound like grim piece of emotional off-loading, there's a 
levity at the heart of Douglas's show that's aided by Lisa Sangster's 
bright design and Michael John McCarthy and Kim Moore's score. Douglas 
himself appears to be without guile in a very real rites of passage 
that one suspects Douglas is still going through today.


The Herald, August 28th 2012

ends
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