Review: The Pitchfork Disney

A student performance of one of the most acclaimed In Yer Face plays that so overran British theatre in the Nineties seems a neat fit, but Phillip Ridley's self-consciously apocalyptic play proves a tricky manoeuvre.

Introducing a couple of orphans, doubly cocooned in co-dependent regression, and the family home they have to themselves – left as little as possible for an outside world perceived as nightmare and, even then, only ever to ship in endless chocolate bars. That their subsistence depends on shinily-packaged comfort food (consumed in infantile quantities), that they alternate squabbling over flavours with repeating the same threadbare anecdotes to each other makes for deep entropy heavy with possibility. The vaguest staging is all that's required, and if the acting is still visible, it fits the rapidfire interplay of Ridley's intensely mannered characters fine.

But this is a piece which gifts actors long, informal-to-the-point-of-gaseous monologues – tempting perhaps, but treacherous, too – every time one or other punts off on another five minutes of crazy-paved reportage (dog attacks, radioactive cityscapes) the effort of actor and audience shows a touch more, and the momentum of witnessing something happening slips further into memory. Worse, content marshalled to shock audiences twenty years back only registers bitsy aftershocks tonight and soundtracking the very longest with music, whether 'Moonlight Sonata' or some cringe-birthing Nineties number from The Matrix soundtrack, intimated a lack of faith in the actors' ability to hold the crowd or swell the atmosphere.

As the play progresses, the grown children's haven is further invaded, meandering sparkily (if indulgently) through set-pieces which owe Pinter credit plus interest, even if Ridley's cosmopolitan  paranoia marks a later stage of the same rotten society. At its knee-jerkiest, the urge to oppose sensibilities can't outlive the targets very long. What there was to applaud in this production came from the actor's enthusiasm and boldness of gesture, and this may reflect that The Pitchfork Disney – Ridley's first play, perhaps still something of a public working-out – boasts its best moments in the connective chatter rather than attention-seeking set-pieces or skirmishes. The ability to hold a tone arrived with his second, The Fastest Clock in the Universe, and the performers tonight did enough to suggest more exercise will allow them the same in time.

The Pitchfork Disney

Three and Ten