Tender Napalm

Synopsis

Tender Napalm is an explosive, poetic, brutal and ultimately redemptive exploration of the universe that is a relationship between a man and a woman.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 25 April 2011

Philip Ridley’s first play for three years, Tender Napalm is a tense, fantastical, sexual tussle between the unnamed Man and Woman, who have met at a birthday party and thread their attraction through a series of mythical games and tarantellas on a desert island.

At various stages, they face off with rival bands of monkeys, re-enact scenes of classical lore and cartoon savagery, sexual taunting and mutilation. Man went on a bender in the jungle. Each has visions of the child they were, or had between them. The tsunami did a lot of damage to their playground, where Man has tussled with Woman’s aunt, a killer serpent he defeats to a round of applause.

Above all, this is a challenge to actors, a wild scenario that Ridley has imagined as a video game with intense realism. And mop-haired, muscular Jack Gordon, who played the rent boy in Ridley’s recent urban fantasy movie Heartless, and Vinette Robinson, who sizzles like an elect...

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Latest User Review

Louise Larchbourne - 15 May 2011:

I also found it pompous and facile, was waiting for it to end and entertained most by looking at the depressed faces of various audience members. A song and dance about nothing, a notion, no contact with real guts. The actors display courage and energy (even if they somewhat annoyingly shout all the time except when finally speaking about their fathers (join up the dots, no real revelation this), but they were up against an intractable foe. I have no idea how this has had such good reviews....

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