★★★★

“a magnificent and terrible thing to watch”

Darkness descends into the carefree life of teenager Toni with such unexpected force that breath drains from her lungs. Then ours. Ever after in this heart-wrecking drama, we struggle to regain balance.

Because, by the time this trauma strikes, young Toni has become our friend. Theoretically, the teen – self-deprecating, romantic, smart – occupies the theatre space alone for 90 minutes, but such is her boundless joy at the prospect of a budding romance that we quickly become her BFFs. What should I wear? What about this? Or this? What should I say? Aren’t his eyelashes just the loveliest?

The mechanics of a crush are awkward so she’s eager to crowdsource some insight.

The romance is almost too perfect as first loves must be. They plan a life together over their first shared milkshake. She will be a writer, he will take pictures. They hold hands. Brush arms. The individual kisses merge into one swelling super-kiss…

But the title of the play is Tarantula. The playwright is master weaver Philip Ridley. Nothing can be as straightforwardly simple as snogging by moonlight.

Something’s coming. Darkness is coming. The clue is in the moments of fugue state when Toni mentions her prospect’s name – Michael. Is she lovestruck? Or something-else-struck?
We soon find out.

You cannot take your eyes off Georgie Henley, who plays Toni. She won’t let you. As the naive schoolgirl, she is mercurial and giddy and all the things a girl can and should be. She dares you not to delight in her. Later, that same thrill is transmuted by her experience into something forced and manic. She is the same but different. The same but shrill. She challenges you to spot the artifice of her carefully constructed veneer of uber-glee.

Under Wiebke Green’s direction, the trauma that visits Toni is physical. It stalks her endlessly and then – in a quite astonishing and visceral way – it occupies her. She struggles to breathe. She is paralysed. She is felled. She remembers.

This parasitical body snatcher is a composite of unresolved pain and guilt and grief. Because one version of Toni died that day – the bright Oxford-bound lover of books and do-gooding school clubs – and this uncanny valley version took her place. What’s left is a too-keen gym bunny who urgently wants to be the hero of everybody’s tale.

To achieve this transformation, Ridley’s script is full of character, heart and keen detail. His lusty appetite for story, the darker the better, help to create a topical slice of gothic horror lightened by moments of utmost tenderness. It is perhaps 10 minutes too long, especially in the later stages, but accomplished, nevertheless.

For all the cleverness, laughter and texture in the script, it is the sinister contortions of Georgie Henley that will stick in the memory. Especially that manic dead-eyed smile, reminiscent of the innocent we met at the start of the evening but now fixed and crazed as Toni is compelled to make stand after stand against the dark tyranny of her memories.

This is a story about second chances when second chances are the last resort. To illustrate this, Georgie Henley destroys us with the scale of her loss. Her performance is courageous and raw. It is a magnificent and terrible thing to watch.

LEAVES OF GLASS at the Park Theatre

★★★★

“Max Harrison’s staging is beautifully faithful and sympathetic to the writing.”

Memories contain errors. Memory is highly malleable; therefore, often unreliable. It can be altered by emotional state from the very second it becomes a memory. Or many years later. Yet most of us like to think our own recollections are infallible, even when we know we might be twisting it. That’s just survival, according to Philip Ridley who explores these themes in his 2007 play “Leaves of Glass”. The middle episode of his ‘Brothers Trilogy’, it was preceded by ‘Mercury Fur’ and followed by ‘Piranha Heights’.

“Leaves of Glass” centres around two brothers, Steven (Ned Costello) and Barry (Joseph Potter). Five years apart in age, but on the surface, they couldn’t be further apart from each other. Steven runs a successful graffiti removal business while Barry, despite being a bit of a dogsbody in the firm, is a struggling artist. Steven appears to have his head screwed on, whereas Barry’s is lost in drink and hallucinations. Their respective memories of their father, whom they lost at a young age, are on different tracks. Yet there are similarities that bond them. But like similar poles of a magnet, they repel each other. Their mother Liz (Kacey Ainsworth) tentatively holds them together, despite her affections wavering between the two as wildly as her own recollections. The only solid presence is Steven’s pregnant wife Debbie (Katie Eldred) who is aware of the fragility of the family, but her tolerance doesn’t stretch to assuring nothing gets broken.

The intensity of the play comes not just from the spoken word, but the silence that surrounds a traumatic incident from the brothers’ childhood that neither seems willing to talk about. When the silence snaps, the effect is shocking. The pieces come together but nothing fits, as the final battle of memories is like a duel to the death.

“Sam Glossop’s underscore splits the play’s segments like splinters of sound that throw us off balance”

The intensity of the play also undoubtedly comes from the performances. Costello and Potter both capture the inherent danger in Ridley’s script and in their characters. Costello in particular, like a brooding prisoner who never leaves the stage. Neither can escape their version of the truth – a truth that we can only keep guessing about. Eldred’s Debbie, the outsider, is more grounded but not quite strong enough to dodge the fallout from the brothers’ mind games. Ainsworth is a mix of concern and complicity as the mother who inflates her own ability to cope. ‘I’ve buried two parents and a husband’ she continually reminds us, ‘I think I’m capable of carrying some tea and biscuits’. The little hints of domesticity are a thin gauze over the deep cracks that run through this family.

Ridley’s signature is splashed all over the piece, although less shocking, and perhaps more thoughtful, than some of his other work. Max Harrison’s staging is beautifully faithful and sympathetic to the writing. Some scenes are short, like pieces of broken glass. Other scenes start when they are already up and running. They end unresolved. It is discomforting and reflects the unravelling of the minds of these four protagonists. The actors come into the scenes from different angles – as jagged as the eponymous leaves of glass. Alex Lewer’s lighting is just as evocative, swinging from harshness to near darkness like a horror film’s bare light bulb; while Sam Glossop’s underscore splits the play’s segments like splinters of sound that throw us off balance.

It is difficult to tell the difference between a lie and a truth misremembered. This family is built on both – a pretty unstable foundation to begin with. It is not always easy viewing to witness, but the craftmanship of the acting and the writing force us not to look away. Memory may be fragile, but “Leaves of Glass” will be difficult to forget.

TARANTULA

Arcola Theatre

★★★★

“a magnificent and terrible thing to watch”

TARANTULA

Arcola Theatre

Reviewed on 10th January 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Kate Hockenhull

Previously reviewed at this venue:

TARANTULA

TARANTULA

TARANTULA

LEAVES OF GLASS at the Park Theatre

★★★★

“Max Harrison’s staging is beautifully faithful and sympathetic to the writing.”

“Sam Glossop’s underscore splits the play’s segments like splinters of sound that throw us off balance”

LEAVES OF GLASS at the Park Theatre

Reviewed on 25th January 2024

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Mark Senior

Previously reviewed at this venue:

LEAVES OF GLASS

LEAVES OF GLASS