Crazy crazy play: Mercury Fur at the Guildhall
Mercury Fur
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Milton Court Studio
Unreserved, £10
17 October 2018
Barbican page
A few years ago I was given a book of Philip Ridley plays; I was troubled by them all but most floored by Mercury Fur, and sceptical of the gift giver’s claims to have seen it staged. It was not so much the mechanics of the play that seemed impossible – the main horrors pointedly happen offstage; everything we see takes place in one room; the play is largely a piecing together of information most of the characters already know, in a very play-y way; and in all it is entirely a play meant to be performed. But I think you can only arrive to this conclusion when viewing Mercury Fur coolly, a long way off from having read it. Too close and I am intoxicated by its audacity, its grandiose venom, its extravagant beauty, all of which seem to live within the printed word.
Of course, this is a reason to seek out a performance. The play is meant to be performed; the audacity, the venom, the beauty are meant to live in theatrical space. To have written it the way he did Ridley seems to have had a vision as to what it should be. It’s a bold and brave thing to attempt to realize, brave because extravagance and grandiosity can easily go wrong. This production by Guildhall School easily swallows many of the perils, armed with an impressive young cast who hold nothing back. But that very lack of restraint is, I think, also a sneaky, invidious peril, and makes this Mercury Fur entertaining if sometimes a bit tedious, sometimes a bit cringe, and no match for reading the play. Sorry, Ridley.
The design by Frankie Bradshaw is very sensible, the lighting design by Liam Strong atmospheric and the sound design by Dan Barnicott suitably apocalyptic. Director John Haidar effectively marks the play and, I’ll say again, the cast are all very impressive, particularly for their mastery of Ridley’s tongue-twisting torrents. It’s just all a bit to-the-hilt. Harvey Cole as Elliot and Joseph Potter as Darren shout at each other throughout, and Brandon Ashford as Lola doesn’t mind joining in when she gets the opportunity. By the time Dominic Gilday’s Spinx gets on the scene it’s difficult to see why all these shouty people, so comfortable with each other, have such fear for a person no more shouty than they. The pitch reaches soap-opera silliness in the great penultimate scene, everyone rolling around on the floor vigorously shouting and gnashing, and we enter cringe territory. Elliot has none of his dad’s dangerous depressive intensity – he’s just a big shouty softy, and therefore the ending of the play becomes one thing when I think really it’s another.
But with all the potential pitfalls of this play to be faulted only for excess enthusiasm is not bad going. It might not be as good as reading the Ridley – but it is certainly an entertaining and admirably ambitious vehicle for the remarkable talents of these students
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