It’s been sitting on someone’s desk, in a pile, for over a year in the Royal Court in London, and also for the past few months at the Abbey. It’s my first play, and I’m rather fond of it. It’s about the internet, pervy sex and home cooking. One of the characters, Margot, decides to do a kinky soft porn webcam pay-per-view cookery show, on cumcooking.com, after her husband dies. The play is about her exploits, and of three other characters: a young man who gets it into his head that fat is sexy, and so he determines to eat till he is so fat that he can’t move; the man who loves him, but who ends up accused of his murder, and scuzzlad, the cybergeek who directs her show and runs porn sites and chatlines and, in my imagination, has a soundtrack rather like zerocrop.

The play tackles some electric and controversial themes in a bold manner, looking at sexuality and dramatising the ways sexual status continues to pervade our society. The characters are all drawn with care, their flaws giving them a real texture and depth, and the dialogue is both touching and brutally honest. This is a weird and wonderful play.

“I enjoyed the play very much. Thematically I found the piece compelling and insistent and thought the notions of appetite were given a fantastic twist. I think any piece that uses the forum of internet chat runs the risk of being better done as a radio drama but I think that the emotional content of the piece packs a real punch and would give a creative director / company plenty to play with.”

Although we enjoyed the play, the overall feeling was that the style of the piece and the subjects it addresses are not quite in keeping with the kind of work that Rough Magic produces.

It’s quite extreme, so I’m not surprised it will take a while to find a home.

A 3-hander, 2 acts, 1 website. Gotta love it.

Oh, I think it’s worth a punt keeping the domain one more year. ]]> http://bonhom.ie/2006/04/should-i-renew-cumcookingcom.html/feed 3 http://bonhom.ie/2006/02/vachss.html http://bonhom.ie/2006/02/vachss.html#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:45:00 +0000 Dermod http://81.17.252.110/~dermod/2006/02/vachss.html If you are as intense as I am, sometimes the only rest you can get is via a concentrated dose of intensely dark crime fiction, a sort of literary homoeopathy. None gets darker than Andrew Vachss, especially in his Burke series. I am up to my neck in Blue Belle now. Relaxing is not the right word for it – when you can’t put a book down, the focus takes up a lot of energy, and in Vachss’ world there is no letting go of the tension. But it is satisfying. The world Vachss describes is a blasted wasteland of New York hustlers and transexuals and pimps, cons and ex-cons; the law of the urban jungle rules, and it ain’t fair and it ain’t right. Emotions are so controlled they are padlocked in a safe and thrown in the Hudson. Here, trust is the only thing worth living for, and dying for, and betrayal of trust the only thing worth killing for, you know the score. Burke, an outlaw’s outlaw, an avenger of children who have been abused, takes you to the edge of your tolerance for cruelty and suffering and yet manages to dredge up a deep understanding for even the most fucked-up of low-lifes, right before they have to die. Another writer who doesn’t believe in evil, but in damaged goods. An acquired taste that turns your stomach before you get your kicks. Like unfiltered tobacco. ]]> http://bonhom.ie/2006/02/vachss.html/feed 0