Radiant Vermin is the new play from Philip Ridley produced by
Metal Rabbit &
Supporting Wall, currently at the
Brewery in Bristol. What can I say? No, I mean, what
can I say, without giving away spoilers, about this luminously inventive black comedy. After seeing
Vanilla Jungle from the same team ~ and with the same award-winning actress ~ I was avidly anticipating this production and am now trawling the thesaurus like Will Self on speed for appropriately incandescent synonyms to convey how brilliant it is. It's billed as a wickedly comic satire about the housing crisis, and to that I will only add that if Satan and the Tory Government made a game show, it would probably be like this...
Glittering praises deserved by everyone especially director David Mercatali for choreographing the frenetic mime scenes, Gemma Whelan as Jill with her (not-so) passive-aggressive 'Christian values', and Sean Michael Verey as her Rodney-Trotter-ish husband. And when you've stopped aching with laughter you'll still be pondering those disturbing questions about social aspirations and cultural collusion, and why enough somehow is never enough... Unmissable - and it's only on till Saturday (7 March) so if it's sold out you'll have to go to
Soho Theatre to see it there.
