“Paddy looked up. His Press Night drunken wanderings and stumblings through ancient Soho alleyways drenched in ancient Soho piss and the whiff of drug deals past meant he found himself luminous in garish garnet light. He was beginning to sober up, he was outside an old Georgian building, a green neon light screamed GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. Under, an illuminated sign in 1970s beige read SMITH'S PEEPHOLE in cursive writing. It looked shockingly dated.”

”He kept his large chin wattle close to his chest and his unblinking round cartoonish eyes stared out from a bushy mass of unibrow. He had a patchy beard, pubescent and pubic for a man swindling on the tightrope between twenty-nine and thirty. He had the flatulent look of a sick dog that needed to be put down. Creepy Cooper’s eyes only ever hovered between the froth of Betty’s breasts and the crust of the carpet. He’d follow her around the theatre staring at the floor, trying to start a conversation with her. A sulphuric stench of decaying apples would follow him about like poison gas. Betty wondered if he thought they were somehow in the same league? “

from “Welcome to the Elysian”

Welcome to the Elysian is about the foolish decadence of showbiz and the lonely lives of the employees of the Elysian Theatre. We meet Betty and Paddy who work very different jobs and live very different lives at the decaying Elysian Theatre in London’s West End. Paddy is a bisexual, Irish actor desperate for Hollywood fame. He is currently starring as Stanley in a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, but a drunken Press Night stumble takes him to make a Faustian Pact with one of Hollywood’s most mysterious and powerful men.

Betty is an art student working as an usher on A Streetcar Named Desire. She is nineteen, naïve and has a devastating crush on an older, failed poet who works alongside her. Betty is desperate to earn enough money to fund her photography, but soon falls prey to the debaucerous Soho nights. Her life soon becomes entangled with everyone around her, including star-of-the-show Paddy Mulholland. Her choices lead to her being slut-shamed by her co-workers.

Betty’s surreptitious photography becomes a lens from where we witness crimes, love affairs, and power struggles. Both Paddy and Betty are enraptured by the seductive late night parties with the promise of salacious success. But for Paddy, his life is soon abrupted when his grandmother in Ireland dies. He has to make his way back to Ireland to face his disapproving father and family. They’re endlessly caught in the trap of miscommunication and shame. Paddy returns to London, releasing himself from the shackles of his disparaging family, but he only slips deeper into the dark misfortunes of showbiz.

Betty and Paddy both have to make difficult choices about their life and their art. Their worlds collide descend into chaos and tragedy. But what Betty and her camera see could reveal the truth for everyone to see.