Writer & Director: Clare Dunne
Going into the Project Arts Centre to see Sure Look It, Fuck It, one suspects from the title that the audience is going to see something a little bit wild and loose, something full of swearing and energy, that feeling of getting to the end of the week and finally going ‘ah sure look it, fuck it’. And that is exactly what we get.
Missy is back from New York and preparing for a job interview. Like many before her, she went to America to be discovered, have adventures, make money, leave behind the suburbs. She made friends, had many great nights out, but spent her days cleaning up after others and counting down the hours. After five years she returned to Dublin, feeling she has nothing to show for her years abroad and that everyone knows it. While her peers have moved on to jobs and with partners, she is back in the family home, with a blank CV and an empty bank account.
Her interview could not be called a success, and she soon finds herself hand in hand with a homeless man walking the streets, trying to pull hope from the air. Home again she joins her parents at the local pub, where she meets an old friend and thus begins a night on the sesh.
With the audience along for the ride Missy has the kind of adventures and insights that one can only find in the dead of night with music pulsing and smoke in the air. What follows is exciting, unnerving, truthful, exaggerated, and a one of a kind night. Claire Dunne, the only actor, prowls the dark stage and keeps the focus on her for the entire performance. At no point does the eye or ear waver. Her magnetism keeps us entertained.
On the one hand Sure Look It, Fuck It feel very Irish, with Dunne’s strong Dublin accent and turn of phrase, catching Catholic flu in the club, and winding up at mammy’s kitchen table hungover to hell. On the other it draws on the universal; a lost millennial trying to make their way in the world and finding themselves back with old friends and family. And afterall, who hasn’t had one of those days where you end up wanting to forget it all, or blow it all up, with your friends?
A spoken word comedy, the entire play is in rhyme, which helps it to bounce along and pull us in. It avoids being cheesy and instead is sparkling and powerful. A small amount of audience participation is required. If those words strike fear into the heart, don’t worry. Bright lights at the back of the stage flash at the audience when it is time to chant “fuck it” in unison.
Other than the lights facing the audience the stage is bare and mostly dark, except for a guitarist Ailbhe Dunne stood to the right. Playing electric guitar, they seamlessly blend music into the narrative, complementing Missy’s flights of fancy and heightened emotions (while also wearing a fabulous pair of boots). Occasionally Dunne starts to sing and in doing so shows off a rather excellent singing voice.
It was a great hour or so of entertainment, the audience laughing throughout, and rising to their feet as the show closed. Dunne resurrected Sure Look It, Fuck It after a knockout run in 2019. Hopefully this will not be the last we see of Missy and her fuck it attitude.
Reviewed 19th March 2026.
