Writer: Christopher Brett Bailey
Christopher Brett Bailey’s new 70-minute show, I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven, may once have got him burned as a witch with its graphic discussions of carnal relations with the beast, but now it gets you a slot in the Upstairs space at the Soho Theatre, where audiences can enjoy this blackly comic staged reading of a fantastical tale. Peppered with references to contemporary American culture, it starts to reverse the world that evolved through the Bible, following Eve’s temptation, asking whether we can ever return to a purer, kinder existence without darkness to balance us out.
It’s not every day that you meet the lactose-intolerant master of evil in a corner shop, but Brett Bailey’s protagonist is only a stone’s throw from hell in one of the worst places in America. Sensing a mutual attraction, the devil takes the speaker out for a wild night of cavorting, fornicating and indulging, constantly walking the line between pain and pleasure before ‘the authorities’ intervene and a new world is born.
Performed as a reading, Brett Bailey uses only his own intonation, delivery style and some subtle lighting effects to create a dingy, downbeat town filled with sin and hopelessness with the devil as its neighbour. Seated at a small desk with just a microphone and the script, this is very much in the Jackanory and Tales of the Unexpected mode, as the audience relies on the prompts given by the writer to conjure I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven into being. And for those with a cinematic imagination, films like Sin City or the more recent Batman and Joker movies may well shape the crime and poverty-wracked neighbourhoods that Brett Bailey leads us into.
The story itself becomes increasingly extreme with sentient cutouts of Shirley Temple, the full horror of American criminal justice, conspiracy theories and some truly painful sexual experiences, random encounters and digressions. Brett Bailey’s writing is vivid and delivered with relish, describing the narrator’s manly 69% proof beer as “tasting like the sweat of a Viking invasion” while evoking and toying with many satanic clichés from the crowd of worshippers who come to support him, to the forked tongue, devil horns and pointed tail. It’s all delivered with a relish that both celebrates and looks askance at Satan; “I don’t worship him, I am his equal”, the narrator claims with a cool sense of detachment from his antagonist’s fate.
Alex Fernandes’ lighting adds to the rising drama, matching Brett Bailey’s tone and delivery to create waves of tension, slowly blending from green and purple to red or bright white as the tale twists and turns. The 70-minutes fly by as the narrator’s deep tones and low register bring a jaded, hard-boiled, almost film noir quality to the fantastical descriptions while commenting on the human capacity for war, misery, dissent and mindless distraction emanating from the devil’s existence. And while even imagining such sexy shenanigans with Satan may have got Brett Bailey a ducking a few hundred years ago, whether we can actually live without the beast leaves us with the devil of a dilemma to ponder.
Runs until 2 May 2026
