Northern Light Theatre’s theme for their 2024-2025 season was Making a Monster. The first two plays were Trevor Schmidt’s Monstress (a gothic horror in which a Frankenstein-like scientist attempts to reanimate a dead girl but gradually appears to be more monstrous herself) and Penelope Skinner’s Angry Alan, a disturbingly-realistic portrayal of a lonely man drawn into the “men’s rights” misogynistic culture with horrifying consequences.
I was apprehensive but intrigued, to find out how the third play in the season, Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin, would fit into this theme. I had some guesses, but they were all wrong. And I loved being surprised. What surprised me most was that it was funny. Very funny.
An exceedingly wholesome-looking young couple, Jill and Ollie (Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk), address the audience with their baby, to explain about how they got their dream home and what happened there. When Jill was pregnant, they were living in a dingy flat in a crime-ridden neighbourhood, dreaming of better things for themselves and their little one. Until they get a mysterious letter and an even more mysterious visitor, Miss Dee (Holly Turner), who tells them they’ve been selected by a government department to get a free house. It’s a fixer-upper, but by renovating it they’ll start turning things around for the whole neighbourhood, and everyone will benefit. They see the house and ask about details, and a mythologically-long contract tumbles out of Miss Dee’s handbag. Everything about this screams BAD IDEA to me, from the twinkle in Miss Dee’s eye to the long golden scroll of clauses on the contract, but as soon as they sign, movers are dispatched to their old home and they move in, even before the electricity or hot water are working.
Ollie starts out confident that he can DIY the necessary renovations, but heavily-pregnant Jill is impatient. They’re both unsettled by living in an un-gentrified area. If they can see campfires of homeless people from their bare windows, can the homeless people see their vulnerable candles? Jill explains to us that she has experience of helping her mother provide charity to homeless people – that she and Ollie are good people. But they are still fearful of being targets in their good fortune. Her othering language is a little disturbing, but very familiar. But when an accident happens to a vagrant on their property, they benefit in an unexpected way. And they begin to justify it – their gain helps the neighbourhood, and nobody who mattered was hurt. By this time the characters are fully drawn – Jill’s earnestness and obliviousness, Ollie’s awkwardness and willingness to please his wife – and I felt almost complicit as they wonder about what else they could benefit from. The script builds this complicity in some direct address to the audience on benign topics, such as inviting input on whether to renovate the bathroom or the garage first.
Jill and Ollie’s house gradually gets renovated, according to the wish-list that Jill collects from magazines and catalogues. Upwardly-mobile neighbours gradually move in to the cul-de-sac, and we hear that ground’s been broken for the Never-Enough shopping mall nearby. Once all the houses are occupied, Jill and Ollie throw a garden party to mark their little son’s first birthday, with all the neighbours in attendance – and their facade of contentment and competence begins to fray, in a hilarious recounting.
I was thinking, this can’t end well. But I didn’t predict how!
The empty set (Schmidt) has a nearly-flat backdrop of a white-on-white house outline, with some harshly-shadowing sidelights. Its cleverness isn’t apparent until the show lighting (Larissa Poho) and projections (Matt Schuurman) begin to enhance it. I was fascinated about how the simple “porch” framing was used, along with shifts in light and soundscape (Chris Scott), to represent stepping from an upstairs bedroom into a staircase leading to potential danger.
The script of Radiant Vermin does have some important messages/themes, about envy and about buying in to materialistic wanting-more and about dehumanizing the have-nots, but the messages land with bouffon-esque discomfort at our own complicity. Schmidt’s production is perfectly cast. Holly Turner, most memorable as the eponymous Mary in The Testament of Mary, is hypnotically fascinating here, as the character Miss Dee needs to be, and Matkin and Yaschuk are well-matched, allowing some outrageous events to be natural character choices.
This was one of Northern Light Theatre’s most successful thematic season groupings in my memory, partly because the plays were so different. Each illuminated some facet of the question of how ordinary humans can do evil things. Each left me uncomfortable and wanting to discuss my experience with others. And each made me grateful for the community of theatregoers with whom I can share, both the roomful of audience members laughing and sighing and gasping in the moment, and the ongoing conversations like this.
Before today’s matinee, Trevor Schmidt is hosting a Director’s Circle at 1 pm. At these events, he typically discusses the motivation for choosing the play and some of the design challenges, without giving away anything about the ending. And on Thursday there’s a moderated talkback after the show – more opportunities to join in the conversation.
Radiant Vermin continues at the Arts Barns Studio until May 3, with tickets here. Be disturbed and be delighted!
Ephemeral Pleasures 