Add a dash of religious hatred, a pinch of homosexual love and a gallon of overweening pride to create The Massacre at Paris. Following their first production of the new play The Underwood, Doorslam Productions lives up to its claim to eclecticism by producing Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris, directed by Mark Wilson and Jenny Lovell.

Paris, 1572: the royal houses of France and Navarre, long divided by religious difference, are bound together under the eyes of God in holy matrimony. Now, they hope, begins lasting peace for all in France.

But when the scheming Duke of Guise, the power-hungry Catherine de’ Medici and the ambitious future King Henri III join forces, the time of matrimonial joy and religious tolerance is cut short in the most bloody and highly entertaining manner. There are stabbings, shootings, crucifixions and a pair of poisoned gloves to ensure the Protestants never hold sway in gay Paris…

But what Henri, Catherine and the Duke don’t anticipate is right royal retaliation!

This final and most bloody tragedy from Christopher Marlowe (the playwright who brought us the soul-selling Doctor Faustus) is brim full of greed, lust, plots, murder, blood-letting and intrigue at the royal court, delivered through deliciously evil soliloquies and scenes where language can barely disguise the characters’ desire for power and position.

In its day The Massacre at Paris was both a risk and a popular success: a risk because Marlowe was writing about living monarchs and contemporary politics, and wildly popular with the Protestant London audiences because of its depiction of those ‘rotten’ Catholics.

Today Doorslam Productions brings this tragedy to modern audiences to keep alive the ideas, the words and the enigma of Christopher Marlowe:

Bloody Genius or just plain bloody – you decide.