50 Shades Of Black

I have a play on in London that is doing rather well.  A couple of months ago I was contacted out of the blue by the producer of the 'Terror Season' at Soho Theatre to contribute something for the event.  It turned out that he had heard about from me my association with the 'In Yer Face' group of writers and from my play Noise which was a big hit at Soho some years ago.  Terror is the UK's only annual festival of horror theatre and they have had some great writers contribute, so it was good to be asked.  The idea I came up was 50 Shades Of Black, a dark comic satire on that book - 50 Shades Of Grey.  Sarah and Lucy and I went down to London to see it together with some friends and made a weekend of it, taking in a few exhibitions too, including the Pre Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Modern; but I discovered that I had pretty much seen most of the paintings there previously, which were loaned from Birmingham and other galleries I had visited quite a lot.  It was interesting to see them all together in one complete collection though; it gave a good perspective of the whole movement I suppose; Millais still stands out for me as being the definitive painter amongst them; amazing visual technique and vivid use of colours.  This year's 'Terror Season' as a whole has had mixed reviews, but my play seems to have been singled out by some of the critics as worthy of mention, including a particularly good review in 'The Telegraph'.  It's good to have a play of mine out there again, particularly in London, and more particularly at Soho the scene of past triumphs.  I think there was some merit in parodying that book as well; it's baffling to me how something like that has become so popular - a soft porn world wide publishing sensation about S&M that's not even well written; and I'll bet if you haven't read it yourself you know someone who has.  So even though the brief was to write a short play that was essentially about scaring the audience in an entertaining way, I also saw it as an opportunity to take a pop at something I think is culturally rather dubious at the same time.  Other good news - recent blood tests were normal, so I can relax now for another 6 months!