Ghost From A Perfect Place (Arcola)

Twenty years since its first controversial performance at the Hampstead Theatre, Ghost From a Perfect Place receives an impressive revival at the Arcola.

The playwright, Philip Ridley, was a key proponent of the ‘In Yer Face’ theatre that held sway in the 90s. If it was explicitly sexual, extremely violent or dripping with racial hatred then it would garner applause. Unsurprisingly, this type of theatre still has the power to grip audiences today.

In Ghost From a Perfect Place we see 1960s gangster Travis Flood revisit his old stomping ground of the East End. He drops in on a lady who also remembers the ‘heydays’ when a gangster wore quality suits, and took time to bury his dead in the still-drying concrete of Bow flyover. Krays brother ‘glamour’ is then paralleled with the new East End gang of the 90s; a quasi-religious all-girl cult with a pyromaniac bent. Travis Flood can’t understand the mentality of these girls and has no respect for their Spice Girls inspired dress sense, or their random acts of violence.

Ridley doesn’t allow us to sentimentalise the past, though. Indeed, his dark comedy reveals the flaws of both eras. He does this by allowing the characters to tell their own stories, and in doing so demythologises the myths they’re trying to create and preserve. It helps that the cast are superb storytellers; they conjure up the figures and events of their characters’ violent pasts and strike a fine balance between comedy and pathos. The teatime conversation between Flood (Michael Feast) and Rio’s grandmother (Sheila Reid) is achingly funny despite the tragedy of the events it describes.

With all the references to light and fire, it is satisfying to see the play move towards a point of redemption. All the narratives that are shared either shed light on the truth, or burn up the falsities of the past. Perhaps the violence that seemed mindless actually serves a purpose, after all.