It's like Breaking Bad meets Byker Grove

New play on the seedy underworld of the Dark Web comes to Newcastle

Author: Micky Welch

A Newcastle play-write is over the moon his creation finally gets to come home.

Alex Oates left Blyth as a young lad and headed to London to fulfil his dreams - he got interested in theatre after joinging the Phoenix Theatre Youth Company in his home town.

He spent hours and hours on the Dark Web researching the criminal underworld for his play.

It follows the story of a young man from Whitley Bay, played by Geordie actor Josh Barrow, he's a struggling tech-head, the unlikeliest international criminal mastermind you can imagine. But sucked into an underworld dark web of new-age pirates, local gangsters and tea-cosies, it isn’t long before Bruce discovers how easy it is to buy narcotics online.

The name of the play "Silk Road" stems from what was the biggest DarkWeb blackmarket - that closed a few years back but at it's peak it was turning over £200M a year - people could buy LITERALLY anything on there, drugs, guns, passports, you name it, you could get it.

Silk Road by Alex Oates is on at Newcastle's Live Theatre Feb 1st and 2nd.