DIANE'S DELI: A Tale from Paradise Heights
Today’s Special…Revenge
Sean Ginty is a café owner in Paradise Heights. A quiet and unassuming man who wears a watch that stopped over twenty-five years ago. He’s a father figure to his two staff; Jake, a literature student, and Gabrielle, an artist and scarred survivor of a horrific fire that left her orphaned some years ago. It seems to be a quiet idyllic existence. But who is the mysterious Angel of The Heights, and more disturbingly - is something haunting the café?
DS Mackey from the local police, is a burnt out and bitter man with an eye for opportunity and the other eye on Sean; he is more than curious about his past.
When a woman turns up in the café late one night, a chin of events is set in motion that will have devastating effects on all of their lives…
A beautifully eerie blend of the supernatural, the dangerous. Loaded with atmosphere and desperately broken people all scarred by their pasts. Diane’s Deli is a scorching revenge thriller, another compelling chapter in the world of Paradise Heights.
Reviews:
The latest play in the Paradise Heights cycle by the mighty Joe O’Byrne, a noirish tale of very bad men seeking redemption, filled with his customary dark wit, salty dialogue and bruised desperate romanticism. Yes, you should all get off your arses and go see it. Steve Balshaw, Grimmfest
Quietly devastating at times, raw and powerful at others. There’s dark humour, bursts of romance that teeter between awkward and tender, secrets bubbling beneath the surface, and an undercurrent of violence that keeps you on edge throughout. It’s gritty, gripping, and utterly compelling. All human life is here, no filter, no safety net. We loved it. And we’re already counting down the days until Strawberry Jack. Mysterious Times
O’Byrne’s writing is strong, lyrical, bold - Diane’s Deli is remarkably gripping and refuses to let you go…balancing moments of human drama with acts of shocking violence. Café owner Sean Ginty - fiercely protective of his so-called ‘family’ of staff - he just wants a quiet unassuming life without the looming spectre of hard man Frank Morgan. Brutally emotional and slickly crafted, a thoroughly recommended excursion into the dangerously real world of Paradise Heights.
The Fiction Stroker
Joe O’Byrne is fast gathering a cult following for his quirky urban noir series of plays set in the fictional town of Paradise Heights. Diane’s Deli: A Tale from Paradise Heights played to a wildly enthusiastic audience…a brilliant, gritty and edgy production. What a night of theatre! Rick Lane, Midlands Theatre
Not too dissimilar to a long-running drama, O’Byrne’s writing is clever. He gives you enough to make the characters relatable and real, ripe for further development and exploration opportunities within the rest of the Paradise Heights series…you’ll be on the edge of your seat. Diane’s Deli is a carefully structured, engaging piece of drama that keeps you guessing. With themes of murder, secrets, dark humour, and plenty of surfaced secrets, It undoubtedly leaves you wanting to see more tales from Paradise Heights. The Theatre Twittic
The Street meets Blackout meets Five Minutes of Heaven, this powerful and very focussed play sees a man coming to terms with the sins of his past and facing them. BBC Writer's Room
Trailer
Sean Ginty is a café owner in Paradise Heights. A quiet and unassuming man who wears a watch that stopped over twenty-five years ago. He’s a father figure to his two staff; Jake, a literature student, and Gabrielle, an artist and scarred survivor of a horrific fire that left her orphaned some years ago. It seems to be a quiet idyllic existence. But who is the mysterious Angel of The Heights, and more disturbingly - is something haunting the café?
DS Mackey from the local police, is a burnt out and bitter man with an eye for opportunity and the other eye on Sean; he is more than curious about his past.
When a woman turns up in the café late one night, a chin of events is set in motion that will have devastating effects on all of their lives…
A beautifully eerie blend of the supernatural, the dangerous. Loaded with atmosphere and desperately broken people all scarred by their pasts. Diane’s Deli is a scorching revenge thriller, another compelling chapter in the world of Paradise Heights.
Reviews:
The latest play in the Paradise Heights cycle by the mighty Joe O’Byrne, a noirish tale of very bad men seeking redemption, filled with his customary dark wit, salty dialogue and bruised desperate romanticism. Yes, you should all get off your arses and go see it. Steve Balshaw, Grimmfest
Quietly devastating at times, raw and powerful at others. There’s dark humour, bursts of romance that teeter between awkward and tender, secrets bubbling beneath the surface, and an undercurrent of violence that keeps you on edge throughout. It’s gritty, gripping, and utterly compelling. All human life is here, no filter, no safety net. We loved it. And we’re already counting down the days until Strawberry Jack. Mysterious Times
O’Byrne’s writing is strong, lyrical, bold - Diane’s Deli is remarkably gripping and refuses to let you go…balancing moments of human drama with acts of shocking violence. Café owner Sean Ginty - fiercely protective of his so-called ‘family’ of staff - he just wants a quiet unassuming life without the looming spectre of hard man Frank Morgan. Brutally emotional and slickly crafted, a thoroughly recommended excursion into the dangerously real world of Paradise Heights.
The Fiction Stroker
Joe O’Byrne is fast gathering a cult following for his quirky urban noir series of plays set in the fictional town of Paradise Heights. Diane’s Deli: A Tale from Paradise Heights played to a wildly enthusiastic audience…a brilliant, gritty and edgy production. What a night of theatre! Rick Lane, Midlands Theatre
Not too dissimilar to a long-running drama, O’Byrne’s writing is clever. He gives you enough to make the characters relatable and real, ripe for further development and exploration opportunities within the rest of the Paradise Heights series…you’ll be on the edge of your seat. Diane’s Deli is a carefully structured, engaging piece of drama that keeps you guessing. With themes of murder, secrets, dark humour, and plenty of surfaced secrets, It undoubtedly leaves you wanting to see more tales from Paradise Heights. The Theatre Twittic
The Street meets Blackout meets Five Minutes of Heaven, this powerful and very focussed play sees a man coming to terms with the sins of his past and facing them. BBC Writer's Room
Trailer
Within the play there is reference to a song, an old Irish song. It became apparent very quickly we would need to come up with our own song for this. So the third 'Song from Paradise Heights' was born...Video below, and yes there are a few more clues in there about the background of the story. There aren't many plays that have a theme song or tune, not many to my knowledge anyway.
There is nothing pretentious about this, no, there is a solid reason for it as those that will see the play will realise. There are themes and threads within the play that lead us back to the troubles of Northern Ireland. It would have been easy to look for an existing song and use that, but with that there are all kinds of copywrite issues and I don't have the time or money for that. So I set out to write one of my own - how hard could it be?
The song tells the tale of a battle weary soldier, trying to make his way home across many battlefields; will he end up in the arms of his fair maiden or will he end up in the arms of the banshee that wails over the dead on those battle fields? It needed an olde world title, needed to be Irish too - so why not -
The Maiden and the Banshee...?
Works for me. I wrote lyrics, musically I am next to useless but I know the vibe I'm looking for. I knew I needed a composer and I knew the kind of sound, instrumentation I wanted - but how do I get that across to a musician? Well, luckily I had worked with the genius that is Holly Wyatt before, and Holly is one of those few people that can understand my feeble attempts at talking around music and composition. She got it, but she also is a brilliant creative in her own right, and as ever Holly delivered in spades. She got together with Craig Edmonson - AKA Stickboy. Finally we needed a great voice that would pull off what the song needed, enter Denise Morgan, a finalist on Tom Jone's team from the 2012 first series of The Voice. The song was recorded and mixed by Vicky Bartak at SSR Studios Manchester. Check the song below.
Is this Shirley? Is the Angel of The Heights back and haunting the cafe? Gabrielle's sketch, mage by Darren McGinn
