Tender Napalm

‘Tender Napalm’ by Philip Ridley, is his first new play in three years. It was nominated for a London Festival Fringe Best Play Award. Ridley has won both the ‘Evening Standard's Most Promising Newcomer to British Film Award’ and the ‘Most Promising Playwright Award’, being the only person ever to receive both accolades.

Philip Ridley still lives and works in Bethnal Green, in the tough East End of London, where he was born.

Having studied art at St. Martin’s School of Art, he is a talented painter, but as with his writing, his art themes are extremely controversial, such as ‘Corvus cum’ – an artistic rendition of an unusual ejaculation! When Ridley has a message to give his audience, he certainly doesn’t hold back.

Almost all of his writings are connected with war, or based in the East End. He has written screenplays such as ‘The Krays’ and dark stage plays such as the strange, but wonderful, ‘The Pitchfork Disney’. One of his plays, ‘Moonfleece’, was banned in the UK, as recently as five years ago, for being homosexually and racially too explicit, so don’t go expecting ‘Tender Napalm’ to be an old-fashioned love story.

This 100-minute Australian Premiere is sizzling at the Studio Underground, in the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia, Northbridge each weekday evening at 8.00, until 10^th September. Saturday performances are at 4.00 pm and 8.30 pm.

The auditorium is set with parallel tiers of seating, facing the central long oblong stage, giving an almost ‘in the round’ effect. The stage itself is grey slate, with the only prop being a large round deep, white bath. The end walls are black Perspex (set and costume design by Claude Marcos).

         Before the play even begins, and as the audience are still filing in, the actors are on the open stage. The bond between the two lovers, whose names we never learn, is obvious as they sniff each other and prance like mating peacocks. A timpani loudly palpates and throbs, raising the audience’s heartbeat (sound design by Peter Dawson). As the couple weave their way around, they start their verbal warfare. 

         The situation becomes absurdly voyeuristic as the couple’s very descriptive and intimate life stories and secret sexual desires are revealed. Behaving like schoolies on drugs, both the powerful man (Joshua Brennan) and the small, but potent, woman (Anna Houston) unwind their wild, vicious stories and ‘get off’ on verbally describing these lurid dreams in light-hearted, but lucid detail. Even in their darkest moods they find grand, exotic situations and characters in their minds to enact their love passions. One minute the woman paints Henri Rousseau style exotic jungle situation, then the man is a world acclaimed hero. Standard reminiscing seems to be beyond the couple’s ken; even their desire to possess each other, seems excruciating and yet blissful. Yet throughout, in their eyes you can sense the confused sadness and dismay of a couple, still very much in love, yet strangely lost to each other.

         Their smooth talking, the self-interested lies, the wild stories from the beach to outer space, continue – anywhere that will allow one partner to be stronger than the other. Any excuse to have the other killed off in their tale!

         Will a flash back of several years to their first kiss at a party in Essex give us any hidden meanings? Where the couple dance slowly and smoochily, and then next minute passionately gyrate and twirl. The couple leap at each other, locking like mating toad’s with their nuptial pads.

          The play ends like a blender full of red-hot chillies. Is there a reason for their strange and twisted love?

Due their proximity to the actors, the audience feels almost strangely embarrassed, not so much at the naked love making, but feeling as though we have just finished reading their private love letters.

Ridley’s use of the words in his dialogue is technically brilliant. He opens up the deepest and clandestine thoughts of both the man and the woman. You are constantly wondering ‘what is simmering away within their brains?’ His dialogue is pure poetry, as he quickly takes you back and forwards through the several whimsical tales that the lover weave.

It is almost beyond belief that such a fine and challenging performance can be given by, Broome-born, Joshua Brennan who has yet to graduate from WAAPA. He was totally tuned to the part that was extremely demanding with tricky dialogue, physical movement and emotion.

Perth-born, NIDA graduate Anna Houston, who had her wonderful eerie play, ‘In the Garden’, recently performed at Fremantle’s Deckchair Theatre, has had a hugely successful career in the eastern states and on TV, and yet this must have been one of the most challenging parts an actor could chose. She too was truly dedicated and focused. Even a decade ago as a young student, Anna shone out as one of the few with that innate, special magical, stage talent.

A great deal of praise must go to the director Melissa Cantwell for keeping the pace of this play belting along, with the absolute maximum visual, auditory and psychological stimulation, l one almost felt punch-drunk by the end – yet still on an immense high.

A tricky set to light, with most of the illumination coming from floor-level spots, an excellent lighting design from Matthew Marshall.

Near the end of the play, there is an intricate and powerful movement routine choreographed by Russell Leonard (who gave us the horses in ‘Equus’).

‘Tender Napalm’ is a shocking study of a genuine love. All of the opposites are there – degradation, praise; rough sex, tenderness; words of love, verbal abuse; sensitivity and yet unapologetic violence. In decades of Theatre going I haven’t seen anything as thought provoking as this play.

Strongly recommended, but not for the pusillanimous, as the descriptions are anatomically vivid, the odd passage gory, and the language ripe, but even so, the writing, acting, direction and overall quality magnificent. Another MUST SEE.