DARK VANILLA JUNGLE | STAGE REVIEW
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Fri 6 March
Company of Sirens are fast gaining a reputation for producing ‘uncompromising contemporary texts’ and their 2014 production of Philip Ridley’s play Mercury Fur controversially dealt with gang culture, drug addiction and infanticide, set in a post-apocalyptic London. Their production of Ridley’s one-woman play Dark Vanilla Jungle follows similar unsettling territory.
The play is told through the eyes of Andrea, a young woman who may – or may not – be incarcerated in a mental asylum as the play begins. Her first piece of bad luck was to be born in Croydon, compounded by the fact that she has a dysfunctional and abusive mother and absent father. As memory and fantasy begin to merge through the use of extended flashbacks, we encounter a world devoid of hope or love. Ridley tests the bonds between parents and children and the yearning to belong and be loved, and as the action develops we realise that love is not something that Andrea is used to.
Andrea becomes romantically involved with Tyron, a wannabe hoodlum who exploits her desperate longing for affection. Their relationship culminates in a disturbing scene that forms the core of the play, and everything that happens afterwards is a consequence of this terrible event. What follows is bleakly comic, as Seren Vickers beautifully captures Andrea’s mental breakdown as she responds to her trauma through enacting a sexually inspired domestic fantasy with a comatose maimed soldier, whom she encounters in a hospital. The final action of the play is both poignant and horrific, a suitable coda to end the play with.
The play is impressively and imaginatively realised through sensitive direction by Chris Durnall and a stunning performance by Vickers, who captures Andrea’s penchant to turn from confidant to accuser with verve and vocal dexterity.
With a theatrically effective set by Bethany Seddon, evocative side lighting by Ben Stimpson and discordant sound effects by William Basinki, Dark Vanilla Jungle is a gut-wrenching theatre experience that confronts the audience with the shocking reality of child sex exploitation and the tenuous link between existence and fantasy. It won’t be to everyone’s liking, but theatre like this usually isn’t.
words ALEX WREN
