Sweet Meat at Old Red Lion Theatre

Exploring sadistic desires fueled by online echo chambers, childhood trauma and gay loneliness, this new dark drama from a queer-led team combines elements of verbatim theatre and folklore. Sweetmeat draws from the bizarre case of Armin Meiwes, who in 2001advertised online for a volunteer to be “slaughtered and then consumed.” The ad was answered by Bernd-Jürgen Armando Brandes and together the two fulfilled Meiwes’ fantasy, videoing the event, which led to Meiwes being convicted of murder. From this strange case and using direct quotes from internet forums, Sweetmeat tries to unpack where dark fantasies stem from, and how internet culture can amplify them into possibilities. It asks questions about gay mental health, rejection and validation, and the need to be desired. Sigmund has been tormented by sadistic desires since childhood, fuelled by online echo chambers and tenuously restrained by SSRIs. When his fiancée breaks off their engagement and he loses his flat, he moves in with Christian, an eccentric librarian with a painful past. As their shared obsessions come to the fore, their relationship mutates from companionship to love to something intense and terrifying.