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Here and Then: Theatricalizing Space–Time Compression in Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 August 2017
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Philip Ridley has made a career of courting controversy in his work for the stage, from the claustrophobia and anxiety of his first play, 1991's The Pitchfork Disney, to the sprawling, ragtag Karagula, whose one-star review in the Telegraph led with the provocative headline, “Is Karagula the Worst Play of 2016?” But perhaps no play in Ridley's oeuvre has attracted as much notoriety as 2005's Mercury Fur, an intense, unrelenting, “interval-less two-hour piece” whose premiere divided critical opinion and provoked walkouts. Paines Plough, the company that commissioned the play, reports that “at least ten audience members a night left every show, unable to take the atmosphere of threat and violence portrayed on stage.” Mercury Fur is set in a futuristic English dystopia whose aimless youth find their grasp on history—and their own memories—slipping away as they become addicted to hallucinogenic butterflies released upon the populace by an ambiguous invading power. While the protagonist, Elliot, ekes out a living peddling butterflies in an ice cream van, he and his brother, Darren, make their real money from throwing “parties,” clandestine meetings for rich clients who pay exorbitantly to fulfill their most violent and murderous sexual fantasies. The play, performed in real time, sees the frantic preparation for—and eventual botched execution of—one such party for a City of London executive (the Party Guest), whose Vietnam War–themed fantasy involves torturing and killing a child Elvis Presley impersonator (the Party Piece) with a meat hook. Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, moral outrage attended Mercury Fur’s initial run, with Faber, Ridley's longtime publisher, going so far as to refuse to print the play. But a number of critics and spectators rose to defend the integrity and artistic merit of Ridley's work, a position I extend in this paper.
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References
Endnotes
1. Domenic Cavendish, “Is Karagula the Worst Play of 2016?—Review,” Telegraph, 16 June 2016, accessed 27 April 2017, www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/is-karagula-at-the-styx-the-worst-play-of-2016---review.
2. Paul Taylor, review of Mercury Fur, by Philip Ridley (Menier Chocolate Factory, London), Independent, 9 March 2005, accessed 5 May 2017, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mercury-fur-menier-chocolate-factory-london-527675.html; reprinted in Theatre Record 25.5 (2005): 280.
3. “Mercury Fur / Philip Ridley,” Paines Plough, accessed 6 April 2016, www.painesplough.com/play/mercury-fur.
4. Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1990), 147Google Scholar; his italics.
5. Ibid.
6. Blair carried out, in practice, a move that was anticipated, in theory, by James Callaghan nearly two decades earlier, when a Labour Prime Minister had last been in office. At the party's annual conference, Callaghan proclaimed that Britain was “living on borrowed time… . We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists,” and the solution he offered was steeped in the same market-driven rhetoric that would go on to characterize Thatcher's administration in the eighties: “we can only become competitive by having the right kind of investment at the right kind of level, and by significantly improving the productivity of labour and capital” (quoted in Bell, Patrick, The Labour Party in Opposition, 1970–1974 [London: Routledge, 2004]Google Scholar, 254 n. 5).
7. Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, 115.
8. Ibid., 188.
9. “This Other England,” Paines Plough publicity flyer, Paines Plough Theatre Company Archive, THM/372/5/3/75, V&A Theatre and Performance Archive, London. (Subsequent items in the company's archive will be cited by THM number only.)
10. It is likely no coincidence that, only five years earlier, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged a season of Shakespeare's history plays under the title “This England,” after John of Gaunt's exaltation of the country in Richard II: “This other Eden, demi-paradise, / This fortress built by Nature for herself / Against infection and the hand of war, … This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England” ( Shakespeare, William, Richard II, ed. Dolan, Frances E. [New York: Penguin, 2000], 2.1.42–44, 50Google Scholar). If the England of Shakespeare's histories celebrated the country's insularity, both culturally and geographically, the modified allusion in Paines Plough's title signals the reality of England's place in a reconfigured global landscape.
11. Lyn Gardner, “The Devil Inside,” Guardian, 9 February 2005, 11.
12. Michael Billington, review of Mercury Fur, by Philip Ridley (Menier Chocolate Factory, London), Guardian, 4 March 2005; reprinted in Theatre Record 25.5 (2005): 279.
13. Ridley, Philip, Mercury Fur (London: Bloomsbury, 2012)Google Scholar, 13 (hereafter cited parenthetically in the text by page number). In John Tiffany's original production, Ben Whishaw, who played Elliot, rattled off the insult with rapid-fire delivery, the slurs melting together into one long word. The moment played for laughs. When Spinx repeated it near the end of the play (perhaps indicating from whom Elliot learned it), the pronouncement was slow and measured, met with deadened silence.
14. Ridley, Philip, Mercury Fur, in Plays: 2 (London: Methuen, 2009), 71–202 Google Scholar, at 84.
15. Ibid., 86.
16. This is not the only sandstorm in Ridley's oeuvre. In Shivered, Alec and Ryan muse about one: “It's all yellow. […] That's what sandstorms are like. You can see it coming towards you. Like a big yellow tsunami” ( Ridley, Philip, Shivered [London: Methuen, 2012], 85Google Scholar). In Ghost from a Perfect Place, too, Travis and Torchie imagine not a storm but a beach, with “yellow sand as far as the eye can see” ( Ridley, Philip, Ghost from a Perfect Place, in Plays: 1 [London: Methuen, 2012], 195–281, at 230Google Scholar).
17. “What Is Saharan Dust?” Met Office, 20 July 2016, accessed 18 October 2016, www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/learn-about-the-weather/weather-phenomena/sahara-dust.
18. Philip Ridley, e-mail message to author, 7 October 2015; his ellipses.
19. Philip Ridley, “Introduction,” in Plays: 2, ix–xxxix, at ix.
20. Kate Bassett, “A Shocking Affair at the Chocolate Factory,” Independent on Sunday, 6 March 2005, 20.
21. Sierz, Aleks, Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today (London: Methuen, 2011), 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22. Ridley, Philip and Sierz, Aleks, “‘Putting a New Lens on the World’: The Art of Theatrical Alchemy,” New Theatre Quarterly 25.2 (2009): 109–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 115.
23. Harpin, Anna, “Intolerable Acts,” Performance Research 16.1 (2011): 102–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 108.
24. Sam Marlowe, review of Mercury Fur, by Philip Ridley (Menier Chocolate Factory, London), The Times, 4 March 2005; reprinted in Theatre Record 25.5 (2005): 279–80, at 279.
25. Harpin, 107.
26. Ibid., 110.
27. Ibid.
28. Ridley, e-mail; his italics.
29. Philip Ridley, Vincent River, in Plays: 2, 1–70, at 41.
30. An incongruent Americanism from the original production was not reproduced in the New Group show. In London, when Fraser Ayres, as Spinx, toasted to “roses and nuclear weapons” (84), he pronounced the word “nucular,” calling up former US president George W. Bush's notorious mispronunciation.
31. Harvey, Condition, 228.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 230.
34. Ibid., 292.
35. Mercury Fur stage plan, THM/372/2/4/7.
36. Ridley and Sierz, 114.
37. Ibid.
38. Gardner.
39. The ubiquity of consumerism—its resilience to widespread trauma—manifested visually, too. The original production's setting list records a “Ronald Mcdonald [sic] figure inside onstage edge of window frame” and an “Action Man attached to Exterior of bed frame” (Mercury Fur setting list, 6 February 2005, THM/372/2/1/56). Similarly, rehearsal notes specify that “[t]he cigarettes should be Marlborough [sic] Lights” (Mercury Fur rehearsal notes, 11 January 2005, THM/372/2/1/56).
40. Rebellato, Dan, “Philip Ridley,” in The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights, ed. Middeke, Martin, Schnierer, Peter Paul, and Sierz, Aleks (London: Methuen, 2011): 425–44Google Scholar, at 438.
41. Wyllie, Andrew, “Philip Ridley and Memory,” Studies in Theatre and Performance 33.1 (2013): 65–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 66; my italics.
42. Tom Wicker, review of Karagula, by Philip Ridley (Styx, London), Time Out London, 16 June 2016, accessed 22 November 2016, www.timeout.com/london/theatre/karagula.
43. Ridley, Philip, Karagula (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 9Google Scholar.
44. Ibid., 10.
45. Ibid., 29.
46. Ibid., 55.
47. Ibid., 41, 38.
48. Ridley, Philip, “Press Conference,” in Mercury Fur (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 137–8Google Scholar, at 138.
49. Ridley and Sierz, 115.
50. Rebellato, 439.
51. An obsession with the JFK assassination crops up in Karagula, too, mythologized as the basis for one of Mareka's most venerated cultural rituals: the yearly televised shooting of the Prom King and Queen as their motorcade travels through the city (and the subsequent lynching of the unlucky citizen designated as the shooter). References to the event—“Dealey Plaza” (132), “Fort Worth Avenue” (107), the “grassy knoll” (11), and “Zapruder Drive” (11, 23, 56, 141)—proliferate throughout the play.
52. This image may be seen online at http://blog.painesplough.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/mercury_fur_0.jpg, accessed 5 May 2017.
53. Philip Ridley, Mercury Fur, seventh draft (unpublished typescript, 12 December 2004), Western Manuscripts Collection, MPS 10896, British Library, London, 89.
54. Ibid., 77.
55. Ibid., 78.
56. John Nathan, review of Mercury Fur, by Philip Ridley (Menier Chocolate Factory, London), Jewish Chronicle, 11 March 2005; reprinted in Theatre Record 25.5 (2005): 282.
57. It's worth noting that Ridley devised his own history for the play's characters (though the document is unpublished): in it, he records that the Duchess was “born (as Brenda Portway)” on 16 August 1966 and that, in 1973, she “sees ‘Sound of Music’ with parents” and “vows she will become a nun. Or singer” (“Chronology,” THM/372/2/1/56).
58. We are positioned to sympathize with, rather than reject, Elliot's desperate point of view, not least because of Whishaw's sensitive portrayal of the character in the original production. Billington's review noted his “savage tenderness,” while Marlowe was struck by his “thin, painfully young face ravaged by agony and anxiety.” Since then, Whishaw, who also starred in Ridley's Leaves of Glass in 2007, “has made a speciality of the damaged, the doomed, the beautiful and damned” (Alexis Soloski, “‘I'm Not Damaged’: Ben Whishaw on Sexuality, Privacy and Playing Troubled Heroes,” Guardian, 3 April 2016, accessed 4 April 2016, www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/apr/03/ben-whishaw-damaged-sexuality-privacy-troubled-heroes-broadway-crucible-interview). Trevor Nunn, who directed Whishaw's career-making performance as Hamlet in 2004, has commented on the actor's “extraordinary sensitivity—sort of one skin less than most people around him” (quoted in Soloski).
59. Ridley, Mercury Fur, seventh draft, 55.
60. Elliot reveals the Duchess—in keeping with her aspirations in Ridley's unpublished chronology—was a singer once. He tells Lola he used to “love listening to Mum sing in the pub. She wears this beautiful dress and when the light shines on it … it sparkles” (66), anticipating the Duchess's entrance moments later in her sequined, rhinestone-studded dress.
61. Ridley, Mercury Fur, seventh draft, 14–15.
62. Philip Ridley, Mercury Fur, eighth draft (unpublished typescript, 21 January 2005), THM/372/3/1/13, 15; my italics.
63. Ridley and Sierz, 112.
64. Quoted in Gardner.
65. Gardner.
66. John Peter, review of Mercury Fur, by Philip Ridley (Menier Chocolate Factory, London), Sunday Times, 13 March 2005; reprinted in Theatre Record 25.5 (2005): 281.
67. Miranda Sawyer, “Time to Smell Those Roses, Boys,” Observer, 6 March 2005, 11.
68. Charles Spencer, review of Mercury Fur, by Philip Ridley (Menier Chocolate Factory), London, Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2005; reprinted in Theatre Record 25.5 (2005): 280. In 1995, Jack Tinker described Blasted as “utterly without dramatic merit,” its budget “better spent on remedial therapy” (review of Blasted, by Sarah Kane, Daily Mail, 19 January 1995; reprinted in Theatre Record 15.1 [1995]: 42–3, at 42). Spencer, too, denounced Blasted as a “nauseating dog's breakfast of a play,” motivated only by “an adolescent desire to shock” (review of Blasted, by Sarah Kane, Daily Telegraph, 20 January 1995; reprinted in Theatre Record 15.1 [1995]: 39–40, at 40), anticipating his assessment ten years later that Mercury Fur “offer[ed] no more than cheap thrills” (review of Mercury Fur).
69. Quoted in Gardner.
70. Ridley and Sierz, 114.
71. Harvey, Condition, 159.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., 294.
74. Consider, in comparison, the final moments of Karagula, wherein the Teacher contemplates a collection of artifacts that have accumulated onstage from the start of the play: “He touches the found objects nearby … He moves them around, trying to find an order … It's as if he's trying to find the story that connects them all” (159). If archeology has become anathema in the world of Mercury Fur, the curtain image of Karagula signals a turn toward its reclamation, a powerful, radical impulse to make sense of an elusive past and thus understand better the present.
75. Ridley, “Introduction,” xii.
76. Ridley and Sierz, 112.