Kev and Meg, ex-lovers but still friends, want to make a porno. Or rather, they accidentally do in the front room of Kev’s flat and decide to share it on a porn site for amateur wannabes. It connects with its audience and their ratings grow. What started out as an accidental one-off turns into a money spinner and soon their ambitions swell, along with their ratings. Not long after they’re being joined by like-minded performers from France and Spain and soon enough the cracks begin to show. Not just in their relationship but in this production.

It’s hard to tell if this wants to be a comedy, a satire or an opinion piece on racial and sexual prejudice.

It takes nearly 50 minutes before the grist at the heart of this show’s mill is really explored. Kev is black and Meg is white. For the best part of the production this seems to be an unimportant casting decision but it’s actually at its core.

The play is written and created by BAFTA Rising Star Winner David Jonsson for greyarea (an appropriate name for the theatre company as the story pans out) and the cast of Michael Workeye and Natasha Cowley do their best to deliver its lofty ambitions. Cowley is more succesful in her potty-mouthed role who sees this only as a business opportunity, while Workeye, as Kev, sees it as an artistic and cinematic endeavour. That’s where the rift between them begins (it also happens that Meg has bagged herself a real life boyfriend on the QT). Let’s call it artistic differences.

It’s a bold and brave production. It’s tricky to create a show about porn, portraying the creation of porn without it becoming voyeuristic (and it fails at times in this respect as the sex scenes are uncomfortable to watch) or just plain sleazy (which it avoids).

But, where this production falls down is in its denouement, when the tone changes sharply from a wry anti-romcom into a political statement about racism, misogyny and power. Maybe an hour is not enough to flesh out the finale.  It starts to feel like another play entirely and it results in something of an anti-climax.

Fringe productions and the slavery of the 60 minute timeframe can be restrictive and in a less didactic setting, in its later life, an extra 10 or 15 minutes will help ‘Paldem’ breathe a little more.

‘Paldem‘ is at Summerhall – Tech Cube 0 until Mon 25 Aug 2025 at 21:00