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A SAMUEL FRENCH, LTD. TITLE
Full-Length Play, Dark Comedy / 2w, 1m
Philip Ridley
A wickedly comic satire about a young couple offered a way out of the housing crisis, and just how far they're prepared to go for it.
“I feel this... thing inside me. Just here. Next to my heart. It's small. The size of sparrow. I don't know what it looks like. But I know it's got claws because it scratches. And I imagine it to be dark blue – mauve almost – like the veins on my mum's hands. I hear it talking. Its voice is high pitched and screeching. It's talking about all the things we've done.” Ollie and Jill want to tell you about their dream home. Some of the things they did to get it, you might find shocking. But they want you to know they did it all for their baby... A wickedly comic satire about a young couple offered a ‘too good to be true‘ way onto the property ladder. Playful, provocative, and viciously sharp, this outrageous black comedy is a meditation on how far we will go to satisfy – and justify – materialistic greed.
Radiant Vermin premiered in 2015 at Soho Theatre, London. This Modern Classics edition features a brand new introduction by Aleks Sierz.
A money pit of a house. Present day.
“Ridley is a master of modern myth” – Guardian
“A gift for savage prophecy is often unwelcome in society, and Ridley has it in abundance.” – Independent
“Mr. Ridley... is high on my list of contemporary playwrights these days. He was always a writer of daring and satanic imagination, with a sui generis vocabulary to match. But more recently he's been weaving theatrical fantasies that bear the relation to everyday reality that your dreams, and especially your nightmares. The exotic worlds he conjures feel deeply familiar, even to the point of banality, which is what makes them all the scarier and all the more revelatory.” – Ben Brantley, New York Times
“Accessible and overtly political. Ridley pictures consumerism at its most insane and destructive. He's on stingingly funny form.” – Evening Standard
“Cheerfully twisted social satire by Philip Ridley... Ridley – in full-on comic mode.” – The Times
“It's a deeply macabre, stingingly funny modern fairy tale that shows its two protagonists wading deeper and deeper into murky moral territory. It's deliberately outrageous and surreal but Ridley pulls it off brilliantly. A clever, funny and provocative cautionary fable.” – Financial Times
“Ridley's is a darkly funny morality play.” – Guardian
“Radiant Vermin is an allegorical satire about the housing crisis that unfolds like a modern day Grimm tale. It's a hysterically heavy-handed allegory for the ravages of gentrification. Radiant Vermin works, because it's dispatched with such flippant glee by the writer Philip Ridley: sicko, firebrand, and all-round entertainer.” – Time Out London
“Brutal, deceptively buoyant satire on consumerist greed and rapacity, written by Philip Ridley, multi-talented maestro of East End Gothic and morally acute in-yer-face shockers. The play is very funny.” – Independent
“No London writer has shown more literary potential than Ridley.” – Spectator