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THEIR BRASH AND BAWDY BRAND OF HUMOUR IS WINNING THEM A BURGEONING AUDIENCE. SO ARE THE DOLLS BREAKING THE MOULD FOR WOMEN PERFORMERS OR TAKING COMEDY TO HITHERTO UNPLUMBED DEPTHS?
Brian Beacom meets The Dolls – rude, crude and coming to a theatre near you
THE Dolls are taking over the world. Or at least the world that is Scottish theatre. The relatively unknown – certainly to mainstream audiences – comedy double act has been selling tickets faster than your granny grabbed washing off the line at the first spit of rain. As soon as their 13-date tour was announced, Motherwell sold out in an astonishing seven minutes, Falkirk in eight. The King’s Theatre in Glasgow took 52 minutes but that is, after all, an 1,800-seater auditorium. Since then, extra dates and venues have been added, such as the 3,000seater Edinburgh Playhouse, Europe’s largest theatre.
Who is behind this phenomenon? How did The Dolls’ characters – Glasgow cleaners Agnes and Sadie, who are always on the hunt for men, drink and men (they like men) – develop into the most popular stage double act since Francie and Josie? What is there about The Dolls that attracts 30,000 followers on Facebook and pulls in three million YouTube hits?
The Dolls are Gayle Telfer-Stevens and Louise McCarthy. In their other professional lives, Telfer-Stevens, from Renton in Dunbartonshire, stars in BBC soap opera River City while Maryhill-born McCarthy is a luminary of the National Theatre of Scotland, starring in John Byrne’s comedy Cuttin’ a Rug.
The women are at the top of their game but a year ago they were playing working men’s pubs. Go back five years and they had both fallen into a career sink hole. And it’s from that chasm The Dolls emerged.
“We met at a one-nighter musical theatre cabaret show at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow in 2011,” recalls Telfer-Stevens, 36, in her River City dressing room. “Things weren’t going too well. We both had gone to musical theatre school in Glasgow and London, and landed the big West End jobs. I was in The Jerry Springer Show and Louise in Mamma Mia!, but then it all went tits up for me.”
The actress grins and adds: “I was so desperate I applied for teacher training at Aberdeen, the only f*****s that would take me. I just wanted to be a normal person, pay my bills and get a house and a motor. And I went up there, sat in a lecture theatre and thought, ‘Naw, this isn’t for me.’”
McCarthy takes up the story. “I was soul destroyed after Mamma Mia! I was ready to give up the business. I remember going up for a job in the Met as a policewoman. I actually went up to the building, walked in to the foyer and thought, ‘Bugger this,’ and walked out. But I was lost.”
McCarthy returned to Scotland, auditioning for work which led to the Tron gig. The pair were instantly impressed by each other’s singing talent. But there was more of a connection. “I realised we were both the same, both working class,” says Telfer-Stevens. “We were artistes, yet wanted nothing to do with all that [posh voice] luvvy-darling stuff that gives me the pure boak.”
McCarthy, 29, admits she too suffers from the pure boak at the very hint of pretentiousness. “When Gayle walked into that dressing room and told a joke about a lassie going out on the mad wine, getting off with a bloke and waking up next to his pal, I said to her, ‘Ah feel Ah pure know you!’”
A bond was forged. Sisters separated at birth. Not twins. Telfer-Stevens is a brunette, 5ft 11in and a big girl (though less big since the recent diet). McCarthy is blonde and 5ft 4in. But when it comes to connection they make Frozen’s Elsa and Anna seem remote. They make Fran and Anna look like passing strangers.
Meanwhile, they had to to pay the rent. Telfer-Stevens took a job with John Lewis Direct, booking in washing machine deliveries. “I was so bored we used to try to get the word ‘bawbag’ into the conversations.”
She took off to New York to find herself via an acting course and came back pregnant. (Her daughter Stevie is now five.) Meanwhile, McCarthy worked in restaurants,then decided to sing for her supper. She bought a microphone, a CD compilation and the one-time London star toured the Glasgow pubs singing Sweet Caroline and Patsy Cline’s Crazy.
THE pair, however, had kept in touch. Telfer-Stevens was working as a chambermaid in Cameron House Hotel on Loch Lomond which later gave them material. They yell in harmony, “House keeping” – a line from their stage characters.
“We threw around the idea of singing together, because we loved the old-school musical sound,” says McCarthy. “We thought of being two Ethel Mermans. Then we thought we’d do Motown, so we learned 30 songs we needed for a pub set. But I knew this would be knackering on the throat.”
Telfer-Stevens says: “That’s when we thought about adding talking to the act. Sketch comedy. So we came up with the idea of playing a couple of cleaners called Agnes and Sadie.”
McCarthy adds: “There was another reason. If you did a singing gig you got paid £150. We discovered if you do comedy as well you get £400.”
They had no comedy ideas. Nothing. What they both had was a role model in actress, comedian and entertainer Dorothy Paul, who’d also played a very funny cleaner. Telfer-Stevens attended Paul’s drama school, aged eight. “She was the reason I wanted to become an actress.”