Theatredelicatessen Stages Mercury Fur in School
Philip Ridley’s 2005 play
Mercury Fur is not a work that needs any help when it comes
to controversy. The story of a pair of brothers who specialise in realising the
lewd fantasies of rich clients at debauched private parties, the play includes
graphic drug-taking, racism and cruelty to children. Ridley’s longterm
publishers, Faber and Faber, refused to publish
it and the play came in for a great deal of negative criticism during its run
at Plymouth Theatre Royal and subsequent transfer to the Menier Chocolate
Factory.
Yet all this is not enough, it
seems, for devising company theatredelicatessen who, from 10 February to 13
March, will be staging Mercury Fur in an abandoned 1920s
school at 3-4 Pinton Place, W1, a venue they are calling their new ‘theatrical squat’.
This residency follows the
company’s two-year stint at Cavendish Gate, which is in the process of
development into office space, retail units and apartments. While at the venue
from 2008 to 2009 theatredelicatessen presented six shows, including Fanshen by David Hare and Shakespeare’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, the
latter directed by Frances Loy, one of the company’s three artistic directors
and the woman taking charge of this month’s production of Mercury
Fur.
Elliot, the notorious
drug-dealing lead character played by Ben Whishaw in Paines Plough’s premiere
of Mercury Fur, will be portrayed in this version by Matt
Granados, recently seen in Rope at the Almeida.
