What does TV hit The White Lotus, Shakespeare's The Tempest and CPT Spring Season25's Below Decadence have in common? Sex. Power. Money.
The White Lotus’ series finale rolled around this week with a classic cocktail of tragedy, catharsis and the megarich getting away scot-free. In The White Lotus, each character is so flawed and messy that it’s never necessarily about rooting for them to see the error of their ways, instead you’re rooting to see just how dark it will get for them. In all three series so far, the themes of sex, power, money and peril have always surfaced, set against a pressure cooker location which must erupt in some way. There’s always a clear divide between the experiences of the guests and the staff, and the ways in which they take advantage or revenge on each other.
I’ve been interested in this dynamic for a while. In my play Below Decadence, Seb uses his colleagues on a megayacht – and dates with sketchy rich men – to get out of work, but quickly finds himself in a much seedier underbelly of service culture at sea. The play came from a lockdown spent watching The White Lotus, Below Deck and the prompt of finding queer ways into Shakespeare, and so I used ‘The Tempest’ as my way into writing. In The Tempest, sex, power, money and peril are always at play too. I pulled on the homoerotic undertones between characters Sebastian and Antonio, and turned their relationship into a gay hookup app meet-up gone wrong. Power is always at play in relationships, and money only amplifies this. In the world of megayachts, you’re dealing with people who may not only have more money than sense, but also no feeling of consequence. If you’ve worked in customer service, this might feel familiar too.
Our director Alice and I were always interested in what the floor below is for these kinds of characters. Curtis, our performer, is naturally very charming and funny, and does a great job of making the character’s journey feel casual, even as he starts to become more ruthless in his search for status. With Below Decadence, as with The White Lotus it becomes not only about how we can make things worse, but how much Seb and the audience are willing to participate in to stay on the right side of power.
What would you try and get away with if you knew you didn’t have to face the consequences?
…and how far would you fall if you did get caught?
Come see Below Decadence and follow the ridiculous high-stakes gay odyssey with us.
Below Decadence runs 22-24th April at Camden People’s Theatre, 7-8.15pm.
