“brutal and lyrical, appalling and somehow poetic”
When going to a Philip Ridley play you know there will be bleakness, anger and what the critic Aleks Sierz christened In-Yer-Face-Theatre. Vincent River has all that, and some whip-smart comedy to lighten the load. It’s a brilliant, fierce piece of writing, beautifully brought to life in this production by the superb performances of Louise Jameson and Thomas Mahy.
Robert Chevara directs with a sense of rhythm and choreography that produces a natural rise and fall of narrative and emotion. The story unfolds against a backdrop of East London locations and a harsh, vicious homophobia that shocks and saddens. The set is a plain room that Anita has just moved into. It is not yet a home, just a place. Nicolai Hart Hansen has judged the mood well with his set and costume design, providing enough of a background to support the story without imposing itself.
Vincent River was written in 2000 and, as Chevara says in the programme notes, ‘it is even more prophetic and prescient now than the it was first produced.’ Hate crime has risen by 29% in the past year, but hate crime against LGBTIQA people has risen by 80%. Also in the notes, Chevara says that Ridley suggests, in this play, ‘that only through honesty can we find absolution.’ And the honesty blazes in both the writing and the performances. It is brutal and lyrical, appalling and somehow poetic. The tension between the characters of Anita and Davey is like a thread of elastic, twisting and pulling through fear, distrust, sexuality, disgust and a kind of acceptance. The connection between Jameson and Mahy is palpable, as their characters navigate the minefield of emotions, eventually finding the honesty that both characters need.
Thomas Mahy is a recent graduate of Drama Centre London, and is absolutely equal to the challenge of acting with the vastly more experienced Louise Jameson, who is known for her illustrious TV roles (most notably Doctor Who’s assistant Leela in the 70s), not to mention a theatre career that has taken her to the RSC and the National Theatre. It’s good to see a new actor clearly on the way to a promising career.
“the force and passion of the acting, ensures Dark Vanilla Jungle is a powerful hour and a half of intimate theatre”
Philip Ridley’s Dark Vanilla Jungle is without question a harrowing theatre-going experience. Running at over an hour and half with no interval, the play is a screaming, hysterical punch to the audience’s gut. Chronicling a young girl’s life of abandonment, sexual abuse and eventual psychotic breakdown, it goes without saying, Dark Vanilla Jungle is not for the faint of heart.
With staging, lighting and music kept to the barest of minimums, the play consists of a single actress performing a monologue as 16 year old Andrea. Her futile attempts to find love denied to her early in life, her parents abandonment and the abuse at the hands of her boyfriend cause Andrea to suffer several psychotic episodes. Culminating in her belief that she is married to an injured comatose solider in a local hospital, the play is a tightly wound downward spiral of the human psyche.
The brutal plot and minimalist staging results in the play being entirely dependent upon its lead actress. Katie Bottoms gives a blistering performance as Andrea, able to capture the sweetness of a young child and the brutal hostility of a suffering teenager. Her portrayal leans more on the unhinged elements of Andrea’s personality; in rare moments of total lucidity, she appears to turn on her audience, shouting in the face of the poor unsuspecting front row. Coupled with such a closed in theatre space, the work creates an atmosphere of increasing claustrophobia as our protagonist’s life spins further out of control.
The play is at times episodic, tumbling from one horror to the next. However, Bottom’s visceral performance allows the audience to follow Andrea’s scattered and fragmented thoughts. Her clear attempts to inject some levity and even comedy into Andrea allows the audience to breathe easy before the story inevitably takes a turn for the worse.
There is little subtlety or symbolism in the play’s portrayal of a sexual abuse cycle. Ridley’s work leaves little to the imagination in terms of the impact that abuse is having on the protagonists psyche. The play never attempts to hide the horror of such acts of violence, and while this aspect of the work is undoubtedly difficult to watch, the lack of gratuity or mystery in it provides a clear view of what some of the most vulnerable children in society are exposed to.
The play is a hard watch. With the intensity of Bottom’s performance, the graphic nature of the content and the dark progression of plot, at times the play appears to be punishing its audience. However, the force and passion of the acting, ensures Dark Vanilla Jungle is a powerful hour and a half of intimate theatre.
