Review: Philip Ridley's Piranha Heights, Old Red Lion
04/12/2014
Was talking to a fellow audience member in the queue for the loo at the interval; English wasn't her first language but Piranha Heights was her first play. She wanted to experience British theatre. She'll have certainly got an experience.
Philip Ridley is unique among modern playwrights for his ability to poetically mix gritty realism with fantasy and horror in a style that is inevitably unsettling. His scripts are visual and productions often physical and muscular and this revival of Piranha Heights is no exception.
Brothers Alan (Alex Lowe) and Terry (Phil Cheadle) are meeting in the housing association flat of their recently deceased mother to decide who is entitled to what from their mother's belongings and, most importantly, who gets the flat.
Nothing is straight forward with Ridley though. There is always something in the characters history or in the present that isn't quite right, often a little bit sinister or uncomfortably strange and sometimes downright shocking. You can almost guarantee that something or someone will not be quite as they initially appear.
Then Garth (Jassa Ahluwalia), Alan's son, turns up along with his imaginary friend: a Jiminy Cricket with violent tendencies.
Part statement on modern society and part statement on the human condition there is a whole heap of realism amid the surreal fantasy. I'm not sure this production quite does full justice to Ridley's play. There perhaps could be a little more subtlety in the tonal shifts to build the tension and give certain scenes more room for manoeuvre. It is almost like a horrific farce, slapstick with a bloody nose. Must say that Ryan Gerald and Jassa Ahluwalia do steel all their scenes, the latter is the stuff of nightmares.
The woman at the interval seemed to be enjoying it, it is an interesting yardstick by which to judge British theatre. Not my favourite Ridley production - and I'm a huge fan - but there is certainly enough in there to remind me of everything I love about his work.
You can catch Piranha Heights at the Old Red Lion Theatre until this weekend, Dec 6 and is two hours long including an interval.
RS/BW 6DS
Phil Cheadle was in The Changling at the Barbican with Tom Hiddleston who was in the Hollow Crown series with Mr W (and also two years below him at RADA)