Friday 20 June 2014

69 Shades Of Black - not '50 Shades Of Black'

A mate rang me today to ask if I had a play touring, as she thought she saw one of my titles.  The play in question was called 69 Shades Of Black, and I had a short play at Soho Theatre 'Terror Night' a while ago that did very well and had some great reviews called 50 Shades Of Black, so that’s where the confusion came from.  Thing is I’ve been trying for bloody ages to get a producer/director interested in me rewriting the two-hander as a two act play, but have met with utter indifference.  It’s frustrating when you know you have a good idea and even one with a decent pedigree to discover that finding another home for it is for someone like me, a struggling playwright, near impossible; I’m not even sure if I had one response or acknowledgment, and so after a while I gave up trying with that one.  I guess it was only a matter of time before someone else came up with a similar idea, so - best of luck!  I was approached by someone who was interested in making my play into a short film though, so you never know it might still have a further life.  Anyhow, below is one of the reviews from my production in the Terror Season; this one, Charles Spencer for The Telegraph…

There are four short plays and three of them are no great shakes. Robert Farquhar’s No Place Like proves an entirely damp squib but comic actor Mike McShane’s Representation does at least achieve a couple of shivers with its tale of vampires in Hollywood. There is also a characteristically nasty and disconcerting piece from Mark Ravenhill about sinister experiments on children in which the narrator seems to be confusedly recalling a bad dream. This one does indeed haunt the memory but never delivers the required final punch.

Alex Jones’s Fifty Shades of Black however achieves exactly the required jolting impact. It stars the two likeable cabaret performers, Desmond O’Connor and Sarah-Louise Young, as a pair of lovers who, clearly influenced by 50 Shades of Grey, are engaging in a spot of S&M. They set about the domination and submission routines with nervy embarrassment and it all feels like a risqué lark. But suddenly the mood changes with a payoff that really does shock and terrify.

The fact that this deeply disconcerting moment comes from two artists who have come to seem like reassuring friends in the course of the show proves a genuine theatrical coup in an evening that is otherwise not nearly as scary as one might wish.