“It feels like it came from a young, angsty mind who hasn’t seen or read enough yet but who has a lot of exciting potential”
There are certain trademarks of a Philip Ridley story present, in some formation or other, in pretty much everything he writes: deep unexplained trauma, repression, mania, dark humour and unusual family dynamics. Normally these markers serve as a jumping-off point for nuanced and unexpected ideas- his seminal 1991 play, The Pitchfork Disney, for example, or Tender Napalm, staged only last year at the Kings Head Theatre. But in the case of The Poltergeist, they serve as the entire idea, with no nuance or unexpectedness in sight.
In fact, after the first minute of the script I know exactly what I’m in for: Artist, Sasha (Joseph Potter) tensely prepares to visit his brother for his niece’s birthday party which he desperately doesn’t want to attend, even with his calming, lovely partner Chet in tow. He’s already seething over his favourite face mask being empty, nastily predicting his boyfriend’s behaviours by counting down 3-2-1 before Chet will inevitably knock on the bathroom door to check he’s ok (what a monster). He’s cynical and mean in a way that leaves no room for sympathy, and which makes any ‘jokes’ completely not funny; unfortunate, given we’ve got to spend the next 85 minutes with him as a spitting, crazed wreck.
Don’t get me wrong, whilst we’ve seen the repressed trauma story a million times, I still think it’s relevant and meaty enough for us to see it some more. But 85 minutes of being glared and yelled at will not cut it.
Potter, being the only performer, is required to play multiple roles at this children’s party. He works exceedingly hard throughout, not only cranking up his already raging character from 10 to 11, but also switching in a group conversation between five or six characters. But with the combination of too many voices speaking in close proximity, and the characters being only vague, stereotyped outlines, it becomes exhausting and insipid to watch. And the big reveal of why Sasha is angry at his brother comes so late and is already so completely predictable that the relief it’s supposed to bring hardly touches the sides. If Potter hadn’t been directed to spit every word with intense hate from the very beginning, it’s possible the effect would have been different, but likely nominally so.
A set and costume consultant is listed in the programme, but there’s no staging, and Potter wears a single outfit throughout- a shiny shirt tucked into light blue jeans- which I hate. It takes until Sasha and Chet are in the car on a mobile phone for me to realise this is set in the present day, because he’s dressed like an early ‘80s George Michael.
If this were a young writer’s first foray, I would likely feel quite different. It feels like it came from a young, angsty mind who hasn’t seen or read enough yet but who has a lot of exciting potential. But it’s from a giant! Philip Ridley, for goodness’ sake! And in the context of his wildly impressive oeuvre, this is beyond disappointing.
“it somehow speaks of the horror and confusion of trauma, unflinching love in the face of howling pain, and above all, it’s incredibly playful and funny and sweet”
Having read his books as a kid and studied his plays in college, seeing a Philip Ridley play at a pub theatre in Angel seems absolutely mad to me. Like having Michelle Roux working at your local caf, or Radiohead doing a gig in your neighbour’s basement. That said, the Kings Head is no ordinary pub theatre, and Philip Ridley no ordinary playwright.
And, stubbornly transgressive as he is, it seems entirely apt that in Ridley’s latest production, at moments of palpable, almost violent silence, you can hear a faint R n’ B playlist, glasses clinking and raised voices trickling in from the bar behind.
The design (Kit Hinchcliffe) is tantalisingly bare: a shiny white floor and plain white backdrop, along with costumes of white tops and grey trousers. No furniture or small props or even a button on a cardi to fiddle with. Just two characters, Man and Woman, and their rich, almost impenetrable fantasy existence.
I feel myself putting off talking about the actual play itself because I don’t really know how to describe it. At once a game of ‘Fantasy Yes’- we’ve been shipwrecked, says man. Yes, with only hundreds of monkeys for company, says woman. Yes, except that time a giant serpent came and ate me whole and I stabbed it to death from the insides, says man. Yes, says woman, that was my great, great aunt, and I too have serpent blood in me. Yes, well, says man, I’ve led aliens into battle against their enemies, and so the monkeys think I am the messiah. And so on. This, spliced with intensely sexual but equally opaque talk of lubricated grenades and castrating garden sheers, and a surprisingly normal story about an eighteenth birthday party, makes up this seventy-minute straight-through. Despite this sounding unbearably inaccessible, through its opacity, it somehow speaks of the horror and confusion of trauma, unflinching love in the face of howling pain, and above all, it’s incredibly playful and funny and sweet.
In his programme notes, director Max Marrion talks about how skilled our two principals, Adeline Waby and Jaz Hutchins, are at dealing with Ridley’s particular flavour of language, story and imagery. This is mildly put considering their ability to express both humour and passion in this otherwise abstruse text. They embody both the poetic and the realistic; unafraid to be ridiculous, fighting with invisible swords, jumping from one invisible rock to the next, giving each other explosive orgasms with grenades. Equally, they’re two awkward teenagers getting ready for a party, nervously flirting and dancing like idiots. Their chemistry is complicated; it feels full of experience and genuine intimacy.
Ben Lerner once said of John Ashbery’s poetry that while reading, “they always felt as if they were making sense, but when you looked up from the page, it was impossible to say what sense has been made.” I’d say the same of Tender Napalm. There’s no way for me to convey its message, except to tell you to see it and try to explain it yourself.
