RADIANT BOY
Southwark Playhouse Borough
★★½
“There are some neat, if underplayed, genre twists.”
In its own publicity, Radiant Boy was described by one cast member as “a queer coming-of-age meets The Exorcist via A Taste of Honey”.
That’s a tall order, cramming in a range of genres into a tight turn-around play. It also foresees the fault lines.
It’s 1983. After an unexplained episode at a music academy in London, trainee vocalist Russell (Stuart Thompson) abruptly leaves and returns to his childhood home in a post-industrial town in the North East. Awaiting him is Maud (Wendy Nottingham), his judgmental, curtain-twitching, pass-ag mother.
“It’s happening again,” he announces on his return.
Temperatures drop, bulbs crackle and fail, and he speaks with knowledge of events he’s never witnessed. There is even the suggestion of stigmata.
Maud turns to a priest named Father Miller (Ben Allen), who practises a fringe spiritual therapy he calls psychodivinity.
The substance of the play, therefore, is a series of probing sessions, rituals and cleansings, during which some of the truth behind Russell’s breakdown begins to emerge, including an intense bond he shared with another student, Steph (Renée Lamb), who prowls outside.
Here’s the problem.
There is no menace or atmosphere. Consequently, the cast suffers from a lack of conviction in the material.
The spirit (whose occupation of Russell is never fully explained) is that of Steph, the live-wire, fast-gabbing dancing queen. She is an absolute blast. So what Russell brings home is a friend from school, and the demonic possession is a playdate.
The priest is less an exorcist warring against the forces of evil than a plumber clearing a stubborn blockage in the downpipe.
The acting is technically great – Stuart Thompson as Russell is solid as a moody young man with mummy issues; Nottingham is suitably waspish and disappointed – but the production, under Júlia Levai’s underpowered direction, runs at a perpetual simmer when what is required is some welly, some oomph, some sense of true abyss-staring jeopardy.
Other minor horrors are suggested but never explored or resolved: Father Miller may have malign intentions or Russell’s homosexuality might be a factor. (Much is made of Russell’s queer identity in the programme notes, less so in the actual play.) The folkloric ghost of a young boy in the neighbourhood is raised then dumped. Religion and the nature of evil is surprisingly absent as key talking points.
The staging doesn’t help. The front room that is the centre of the action is initially shrouded in net curtains which are thankfully removed. However, the stanchions remain, and the audience feels fenced off from the actors. As a result, the lingering artificial cube of a set manages to be both too big and too insular at the same time.
There is, at the heart of the story, an intriguing idea. There are some neat, if underplayed, genre twists. Nancy Netherwood is a writer with huge potential, and she produces a script that is crisp, elegant and technically adept. But the play is ambivalent about its subject matter, too prissy to roll up its sleeves and state its case.
In short, the production is haunted by the ghost of the spectacle it might have been.
RADIANT BOY
Southwark Playhouse Borough
Reviewed on 23rd May 2025
by Giles Broadbent
Photography by Olivia Spencer
Last ten shows reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:
SUPERSONIC MAN | ★★★★ | April 2025
MIDNIGHT COWBOY | ★★ | April 2025
WILKO | ★★★ | March 2025
SON OF A BITCH | ★★★★ | February 2025
SCISSORHANDZ | ★★★ | January 2025
CANNED GOODS | ★★★ | January 2025
THE MASSIVE TRAGEDY OF MADAME BOVARY | ★★★ | December 2024
THE HAPPIEST MAN ON EARTH | ★★★★★ | November 2024
[TITLE OF SHOW] | ★★★ | November 2024
THE UNGODLY | ★★★ | October 2024
