Dialogue that spits and crackles like a raging fire so that its rounded characters leap off the page. Encouraged by this general response to his two novels with such dramatic possibilities, Sam Helio has now adapted his novels Gay Village Secrets, a night time snap shot of Manchester's Gay Village just before Covid lockdown, and Surviving Domestic Abuse - both produced by Michael Terence Publishing in 2022 - into black comedies for the stage. In Gay Village Secrets DJ Poppy Cock teases clients in Cicadas, a fictitious bar just off Canal Street in Manchester's Gay Village, to reveal their innermost secrets and desires - no matter how embarrassing - as she winkles out which client it was who killed her partner in a hit-and-run auto accident on New Year's Eve. It's a plot of burning passion and intensity. In Surviving Domestic Abuse it is not a helpless woman ennobled by suffering who is the victim of domestic abuse but Blue Sirocco, a mild disabled man who takes centre stage to tell us how trouble in his romantic paradise led to a near death ordeal as his partner Red Hawk was turned vicious by alcohol and jealousy Yet more burning passion and intensity. Four publishers advised the novelist that if he published the original novel of the same title under his real name he would be in danger. They took this to mean his abuser would take revenge and strike him down; he thought he would be in more danger from cherished institutions that he criticises most roundly; the police, medics, social services, and family courts - hence the author's chosen pen name for both novels and plays, Sam Helio. If you like your drama to roast strong meat onstage, these two black comedies are for you.
