The King & Dai

“It was a windy West Ham morning, late November, late Eighties. We were burning Virgil, probably the world’s number one Elvis fan”.

So begins Hereward Kaye's Musical 'THE KING AND DAI', with tormented teenager Neville attending the cremation of family friend Virgil, only to discover – thanks to a heartless remark by his drunken mother Sharon - that Virgil wasn’t a family friend at all. He was in fact Nev’s own father, the father he'd never known, and now it was too late to call him Dad.

Worse still, Virgil committed suicide, and Nev knows from his compulsive Gameboy game ‘Underworld’, the fate of every suicide is to turn into a tree, for all eternity.

48 hours later, Nev too has shuffled off this mortal coil, mashed to a pulp by girlfriend Gracie's murderous brothers, Rick and Frank. Born away and abandoned by the Banks of the River Styx, Nev has no choice but to join the throng of Penniless Souls clamouring to board Charon’s raft. For the race is now on; Nev knows he must descend the Circles of Hell to claim his father before Suicide Orchard does.

Will Nev reach Virgil in time? Can he beat fate - and it's creepy lieutenant, Welsh undertaker Dai the Death?

And after all that he’s got to cheat death and get back to Gracie. But no one ever gets back - except Orpheus, and he was alive. Nev’s dead… isn’t he?