‘Art of Crime/Crime of Art: BEING PURPLE AKI’ explores the human cost of online crime-solving at The White Hotel

Promising a captivatingly surreal journey into the strange, paranoid world of an obsessive digital detective, Austin Collings’ screwball drama Art of Crime/Crime of Art: BEING PURPLE AKI brings profound human insight and spellbindingly absurd theatre to The White Hotel on Fri 22 Sep.

Starring Lucie Browne as a dangerously devoted online sleuth, the play follows a fanatical hunt for Purple Aki, a real-life North West bogeyman and frequent racist caricature, while exploring our cultural impulse to hunt for clues and satiate our collective quasi-bloodlust in the face of dark, mysterious tragedy following the reappearance of Madeleine McCann and the heartbreaking case of Nicola Bulley. As rigour mutates into fixation, BEING PURPLE AKI examines the psychological cost of digital vigilantism, as self-styled detective Aki Browne grows increasingly frail through romantic paranoia and the desperate need for personal reinvention.

‘Being Purple Aki is a supercharged drama of love, pursuit and that idea which our culture has done its best to empty of meaning, namely, ‘identity’; Collings restores meaning, fiercely, wisely, and above all, with heart. It made me think of an ultra-concentrated Moby Dick. The rendering of voices is magnificent and right: this is how the real world sounds! Unlike most writers in this land, Austin Collings is not in breach of the Weeds Act (1959).’ – Michael Nath, author of The Treatment.

While the original date (Thu 21 Sep) has sold out due to popular demand, an extra date has been added for Fri 22 Sep. Get your tickets here.