'Radiant Vermin' - Play review

Wow, my 13th play review. This blog's really going somewhere now. Did you know it's been 40 days since the last day with no viewers? Even when nothing gets posted, astounding. Many apologies for the something of a hiatus that's occurred since my last blog post. In the past six days I've made over 300 revision cards for biology - hard work, y'dig. Last Thursday, almost a week ago, was a nice break from all that, a trip up to London with a friend to see Phillip Ridley's new play at the Soho Theatre in London. Now I'm not one for laughing at theatre - I can appreciate things are funny and be amused by them, but I'm much less inclined to actually vocalise it - not one for crying at theatre either. Not that 'Radiant Vermin', a play about a horrendously ethically-challenged couple who realise that killing homeless people magically furnishes their new dream home however they wish it, made me cry at any time, but dear lord did I laugh.

Hm, it matches the colour scheme of my blog quite well.

One of the main reasons I'm fixated on going to drama school in London specifically is the vividness of the theatre scene in London, and the three London theatre trips I've been on in the last three weeks (this, and school trips to see Ivo van Hove's 'Antigone' at the Barbican and 'A View from the Bridge' at the Wyndham's) have really helped to cement that impression. The Soho Theatre is just such a great venue, for quite the opposite grounds that the Barbican and Wyndham's theatres are - it's such a modern venue that it has no pretences about being anything other than a theatre.
Other places try to ornately, decadently dress up the stage, the point with the Soho is that with the black-box style space and lighting equipment all on show the space is just that: space, and the characters and worlds created within the space are what's important and not the space itself. Visiting the Soho is an experience of experiencing something more authentic than 'mainstream theatre', if there's such thing, not that's a necessity, it's just nice every now and then.

Immediately upon entering the auditorium you're greeted with the booming 80s mix, which really sets the mood for the fast-paced, enthusiastic action to follow. Much to the audience's enthusiasm, the very last song was Kanye West's 'Gold Digger', which I'm now convinced had some kind of symbolic importance to Jill and Ollie's relationship - as 'she ain't messing with no broke n****s', Jill that is. Having the couple come on to ask the tech crew to stop the music was just one of many fabulous fourth-wall breaks. The whole piece is essentially retrospective storytelling, but the 'reportage' was never dull, with Ridley's signature style and wit playing on an audience very enthusiastic to see something diabolical.

The play is diabolical, that's the fount of its charm as well as its comedy. As are the characters, diabolical, and incredibly well drawn. As always with Ridley, everything was quite clear-cut and blatant, from the manner of speech (uninhibited), to the set (plain white empty), to the costumes (Ollie always wore blue, Jill, yellow, Miss D, red). The last note on consumes was obvious colour symbolism, Ollie's blue sobriety, Jill's yellow greed and Miss D, well, the devil, but now you get the idea of what clear-cut means with reference to Ridley's work - all that's represented is what it is, explicitly so. There's something about that simplicity which made some of the moral questioning undertones even more challenging. Without hedging, every bold statement made one has to challenge, or one thinks one agrees. One. It also made the step down from all the exciting, joyride gallivanting to actual moral challenge even more harrowing. Every murder of a homeless person is done in mime which makes it seem quite frivolous and fun, Ridley's fantastically clever writing demonstrating just how easy it can be for people to forget that homeless people are people too, all until Miss D impersonates one of the 'vagrants' who they're about to murder, and we hear her life story, and suddenly she's a fully-rounded person we're about to kill. I was thinking about how it could all be one big metaphor for how the lower-middle class 'put down' the lower classes to elevate themselves, but I was laughing too hard from laughing to be an English student.

As well as the writing, the acting was incredible. Of course it didn't go to such harrowing depths as van Hove's 'Antigone', but why would it, it's a fairly frivolous comedy for the most part - however, the comparison is necessary, as all the source material was presented as fully as it could be, whether that be from the heights of euphoria to the depths of despair. Of course there was no time to dwell on any of these feelings, because of how the play rockets from mood to mood as it does from scene to scene, moment to moment, and my oh my where the actors good at rocketing. Definitely the most fantastic sequence in the entire play was Ollie and Jill recounting the first birthday party they had for their son with 8 of their new, affluent neighbours in attendance, impersonating every single one with lighting quick character changes, mounting the tension until Ollie's breakdown at the end. This lead to the most wonderful line in the whole play (Jill: Are you alright? Ollie: Yeah, too much Meisner technique) which had the whole audience erupt in laughter. Of course besides all this frivolity, the juxtaposition of more serious matters was even more pronounced, and Miss D's harrowing portrayal of the homeless youth they're about to murder confronted Jill with the consequence of her greed in human form. Her exposition made the murder such a different story to all those before it, and entirely altered the tone of the play.

I know the review is fairly short, but I have revision to be getting back to. I may not have entirely managed to sell this to the extent that I should have, but trust me when I say this play deserves a hyperbolic 10/10 - now that's a once-in-a-blue-moon event.

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