Trafalgar Studios – until 22 June 2019
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Philip Ridley’s taut two-hander is as powerful now as it was when first produced in 2000. Nearly 20 years later, the normalisation of hatred and intolerance of “the other” is populist political gold and violence is more and more common. Rather than looking at the big picture, Ridley focuses on two people left reeling in the aftermath of a brutal hate crime.
The play takes place in real time, opening with Anita letting Davey into her new flat. Anita’s son Vincent was murdered and in the weeks that followed, she has been followed by this mysterious young man. Davey tells her that he was the one who found Vincent’s body, and the two make a deal – he tells her about that night, and she tells him about Vincent’s life – in order to find the truth and some way to move on with their lives.
Louise Jamison is superb as Anita, brittle, hard as nails and devastatingly helpless from moment to moment. As she talks about her life and Vincent’s childhood she becomes poetic and loses herself in happy memories before coming crashing back to the present. Her devastation and shame at only finding out that Vincent was homosexual after his death is heart-breaking, Jamison’s descriptions of the newspapers’ salacious headlines about where Vincent was found and the treatment and abuse she received from her neighbours after his death are delivered with bubbling anger and disgust. Mahy delivers a wonderfully nuanced performance, prowling around the stage like a predator at first, but the power in this relationship is constantly shifting and he soon reveals the tormented and frightened young man beneath the tough veneer.
When the truth about Vincent’s death is finally revealed in all its vicious brutality, Anita’s scream of anguish and pain is shattering, but thankfully there is no cosy resolution in this play, just a moment of maternal tenderness and the hope that these broken people can learn to live with their pain and loss.
Brutally honest and devastatingly intimate, and with two blisteringly intense performances, Vincent River is a play you can’t afford to miss