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A functional take on Philip Ridley's play about the housing crisis. It just lacks the required punch to do it justice.Summary
Rating
Ok
Philip Ridley plays are always a big draw. As one of the leading lights of aggressive and ugly theatre, you can see just why theatre makers want to put on his work. But if you are thinking of tackling one of his plays, then you really need to be able to match the ambition with the deed.
Radiant Vermin is Ridley’s take on the housing crisis and our seemingly never ending need to have everything and have it right now, whatever the cost. So, when Jill and Ollie are given the chance to move out of their flat on the rough estate into a house that needs complete renovation- all for free- well, they can’t say no, can they? Then, when Ollie accidently kills a homeless man, the kitchen is magically transformed into the one Jill had been admiring just days before. They quickly work out that this wasn’t a one off and so begins a murder spree to transform each room to make their dream home.
You cannot knock Cellar Door’s ambition in tackling this play. But whilst they make a reasonable go at it, it just never really clicks: Ridley’s script treads a fine line between the grotesque and humour. And the humour is certainly here, but the ugly underbelly of the play is lacking, without which the required tension goes missing. Each murder passes by without any great shock or care.
Ridley wants us to be desensitised by the mindless violence, letting us be complicit in allowing it to happen, as if to make us agree it is for the greater good. After all, the people dying are a drain on society anyway, but in their final breaths they give something back. The problem is this production just doesn’t do anything other than elicit a small, ok, another one down. Next?
It’s also plays without any real scenery or props – just a lovely outline of a house in lights and a couple of chairs, which is fine in itself but then feels lazy elsewhere. Waving a sheet of paper around and telling us it’s a contract fails when we can all see its completely blank. We don’t need it to be fully written, but at least squiggle some lines on it for a little realism. Equally frustrating is the sound: it seems to come and go, and yet, when it’s perhaps most needed it is absent. If you are electrocuting someone, let’s have some sound effects other than the actors shouting out, “buzz!”
The runtime of an hour and forty-five minutes straight through is another problem. The only reason for not having an interval is so as not to kill the tension in the room. When there is absolutely no tension, why make us sit there for so long?
Considering that length, you do have to admire Tom Carter and Kimberley Ellis‘ stamina to keep the energy and pace up throughout. As the play reaches its zenith – with the garden party seeing the pair play a host of neighbours as well as Ollie and Jill – you can’t fault their performance, albeit that it feels more slapstick than jeopardy. Elsewhere Stacy Sobieski‘s brief cameos as the mysterious Miss Dee and homeless Kay are welcome in offering a change of pace away from the two hander.
There’s no faulting Cellar Door’s ambitions in taking on this play, but ultimately, that ambition is never realised and just ends up a nondescript take on what should be a play full of shock, disgust and uncomfortable laughs. It gets the laughs, but not in the way Ridley probably intended.
Written by: Philip Ridley
Directed by: Brittany Rex
Produced by: Cellar Door Theatre Company
Radiant Vermin has completed its current run.
