BWW Reviews: MERCURY FUR, Old Red Lion Theatre, April 8 2012

Visceral, atavisitic, brutal - Mercury Fur is not easy viewing (though nothing like as controversial as the hyseterical reaction to its 2005 premiere suggests). With London rioting (as in 2005) and about to be written off by the authorities (as was proposed for Liverpool in 1981) and drugged-up gangs roaming the streets like a tabloid editor's wet dream, two brothers set up a flat for a Hostel-style torture-porn party for the Party Guest (inevitably, a posh City banker). Things, as they are wont to do, go wrong and choices must be made.

Armed with Philip Ridley's script, The Old Red Lion's tiny space barely contains supercharged acting from the whole company, with Ciaran Owens and Frank C Keogh as two contrasting brothers particularly impressive and Olly Alexander's damaged and kind Naz beautifully judged. As in Reservoir Dogs (with which this play shares many characteristics) the actual violence is largely out of sight and all the more terrifying for it.

Despite all those emotions laid bare and the connection with the audience made clear by the standing ovation afforded to the cast, there are reservations about the work as drama. Unlike Ridley's Shivered (reviewed here), there is very little light and shade in this script - shade and more shade is what we get - and few moments of humour beyond some inventive, though little more than playground, swearing. Disappointingly, little surprised me throughout the two hours. For all Ridley's iconoclasm, he obeys the old rule about a gun shown in Act One being used in Act Four for example. The piece is just a little too manipulative to succeed fully as drama - the characters are doing what they are told rather then convincing as living and breathing men and women.

"Did you enjoy it - or is enjoy the right word?" I was asked on the way out. "Endure, perhaps?" was my answer and the truth is probably somewhere in between. The largely twenty-something audience's reaction showed that they enjoyed enduring this gruelling warning from the past but I left feeling that a little more drama and a little less emoting would be welcome. 

Mercury Fur continues at The Old Red Lion until 14 April 2012.

 

 

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