Piranha Heights

Synopsis

It’s Mother’s Day and mother is dead. Now her two sons gather in her home to argue about the truth of their childhood. But a storm is approaching...with a violent new truth all of its own.

Our Review:

30 May 2008

With this truly remarkable new play, Philip Ridley completes an East End trilogy of siblings and apocalypse – the others were Mercury Fur and Leaves of Glass – that will one day be rated one of the high water marks of British drama in the first decade of this century.

I’m not usually given to such sweeping statements, but Piranha Heights makes me realise that only Ridley in our theatre is combining elements of cruel farce, domestic comedy and vicious morality in a style not emulated since the days of Joe Orton. And he’s not mimicking Orton, either.

Two brothers, Alan and Terry – played with quivering, puckering intensity by bulky Nicolas Tennant and willowy Matthew Wait – have convened in the high rise council flat of their dead mother to sort out the will, the furniture, their own relationship, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Terry has a fifteen year-old girl in tow whom he wants to re-house. The girl, Lilly (Jade Williams), is covered ...

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Latest User Review

dgr - 12 June 2008:

This truly is a love-it or hate-it production - i thought it a terrible waste of a talented cast who - to- a-man all spoke in the same arty theatrical dialogue at complete odds with their characters. I can;t remember a play that was so Royal-Court-upstairs-checklist (pointless gay kiss - tick; use of the c-word in the first minute - tick; random and unmotivated violence - tick) Cut out the similes and we'd have a decent half hour. It was worst even than Afterlife, which was worse than Fram... Though in the interest of fairness, I would admit the friend I went with absolutely loved it......

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