Mercury Fur by Philip Ridley

Ridley's Mercury Fur is an extreme and macabre play. It sits partially in the ‘In Yer Face’ theatre school, but it also clearly reflects Ridley's themes of fractured family relationships, crippling memories, the most extreme forms of love and the exploitation of the young. There are clear similarities with Sarah Kane's Blasted, especially in terms of setting, language and time period. It is a savage and searing piece of work, grotesque and often profane, bleakly funny and horrific. It is not for the faint hearted and the language is often brutal and may offend.

Mercury Fur is set in a very near future verging of the edge of an apocalypse and deals with how a culture steeped in violence impacts on those who inhabit it. The original production in 2005 featured Ben Whishaw in the lead role. The disturbing subject material certainly lends an edge and early reviews described Ridley as a playwright ‘intoxicated by his own sick fantasies’, but this is a play dealing in much more than shock and horror. It is about survival in desperate times and how sadistic excess can become normalised in a version of the future; what passes for morality when morality has broken down.