A Critic Writes: Mercury Fur (Riot Productions)

Clocking in at over two hours, and unfolding Philip Ridley's paranoid description of a dystopia bounded by the degeneration of order and the easy availability of psychotropic 'butterflies,' Mercury Fur is a bold choice for Riot Productions, but certainly lives up to their vision of 'theatre as an art form with a social purpose to initiate debate.' The eight strong cast conjure up Ridley's bleak future through a mixture of East End gangster poses and an increasingly hysterical series of emotional dependencies, climaxing in a suicidal clinch that questions how far love can save anyone when society is collapsing.

The young cast cope well with the challenges of Ridley's characters: in a disintegrating world, power dynamics shift, forcing the actors, by turns, from vulnerability to determination. Sebastian Carrington-Howell brings a vicious passion to Elliot, butterfly dealer and event organiser to the underworld: as his brother Darren, Tommy Rowe captures a drug-addled sincerity while Frazer Hadfield is a naive, enthusiastic Naz, who stumbles upon the brothers' 'party.' Only Oli Clayton is allowed anything like consistency of character: his 'party guest' is a swaggering monster, half city-boy wanker and half sexual psychopath.

The Assembly Roxy, a deconsecrated church, is an ideal venue for Ridley's messy city, lending a faded grandeur through the architecture and setting the inhumane behaviour inside an echo of past aspirations: unfortunately, the breadth of the stage slows down the action, as the characters pace to the dispersed exits. There is also a difficult acoustic, swallowing some of the lines, especially during the heated arguments.

And although Ridley is a celebrated - and fashionable writer - the script lacks the tautness of his later work. The ending drags and the slow introduction of each character reduces the narrative to a series of speeches ideal for auditions but less impressive when maintaining the tension and menace lurking beneath Ridley's most intense passages. Jocelyn Cox allows each character to have their moment, but this makes the pace lag: in exchange for powerful scenes between Elliot and his lover Lola (a terrified but sly Ku Boane).

Yet the ambition of Riot Productions is well served by the undercurrent of horror in the script, and their connection of Ridley's dark urban decay to contemporary doubts and disorder is timely. The script's preoccupation with psychedelic drugs and mind control mark it as a 1990s' text (Jeff Noon was working a similar vein in his science-fiction novel), but Cox and her cast and crew have demonstrated that it has relevance and dynamism even after the total victory of the capitalist spectacle.