Ridley Plays: 2: Vincent River; Mercury Fur; Leaves of Glass; Piranha Heights

This second volume of Ridley’s stage plays confirms him as one of the most imaginative, daring and unique voices currently working in theatre. All four plays collected here resonant with Ridley’s trademark themes - East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix of the barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own.

Vincent River: ‘… a grieving mother and a traumatized teenager meet as adversaries, rough each other up and eventually bond over a barbaric act of cruelty…Ridley asks questions, lots of them, about how people respond to the loss of innocence in their lives, how they hold onto their sanity in the face of savagery and how they fight to keep the bonds of humanity intact in a mad, mad world.’ Variety

Mercury Fur: ‘…depicts a scary, post-apocalyptic London where, in their struggle to survive, a group of youths are reduced to organising parties that cater for the most perverted tastes.’ Independent

Leaves of Glass: ‘There is a different kind of murder going on here: the murder of truth that goes on in all families to a lesser or greater degree. As with nations, a family’s history is written by the victors.’ Guardian

Piranha Heights: ‘The extravagance of Ridley’s dark vision suggests a dangerously confused society in which individuals seize on random gobbets of semi-digested information and use them to construct their own personal narrative.’ The Times