Shivered, Southwark Playhouse, SE1 - review

Philip Ridley's state of the nation play avoids the stodge trap
Solid bond: best friends Jack (Josh Williams) and Ryan (Joseph Drake)
Henry Hitchings21 March 2012

Philip Ridley’s new play embraces a huge number of subjects. It’s a state of the nation piece, yet far less stodgy than work in that vein tends to be. Instead, as the title hints, it breaks a disturbing story into sharply glistening fragments.

The story is set in a fictitious Essex town, Draylingstowe, which used to be overshadowed by a Japanese car plant. This has been abandoned, leaving behind a community that’s little more than an empty husk.

Plotting its decline, Ridley ponders the wretchedness of post-industrial society and the violence of desensitised youth, while also riffing about UFOs, the crisis of faith and viral video clips.

The pivotal figure is Ryan, a nerdy teen who’s played with great conviction by rising star Joseph Drake. His hands are deformed — perhaps as a result of a toxic substance used at the defunct car plant — and he’s scarred in a different way by the loss of his soldier brother Alec.

Ryan’s best friend Jack (the excellent Josh Williams) torments him endlessly; the exact circumstances of Alec’s demise are a favourite theme.

Ridley’s writing quivers with menace but there are moments of savoury humour amid the scabrous imagery. In Russell Bolam’s clear-sighted production there are persuasive performances from Robbie Jarvis as Alec and Olivia Poulet as the boys’ mother, and Andrew Hawley makes a memorable impression as a fairground worker who speaks with messianic fluency.

However, Ridley juggles too many ideas and idioms. Ryan refers warily to “illusory contours” — the sense that we can find unifying patterns where in fact no pattern exists — and fights to find cogent explanations instead. But Shivered in the end seems more like a splintery illusion than something satisfyingly unified.

Until April 14 (020 7407 0234)

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