We await the news that our keys to our new space are awaiting deliverance; after a heart wrenching couple of months in which we turned up to see locks being changed, fought to keep the Christmas Festival going, had an emotional party farewell to 295 Regent Street and carried bar pieces, flats and other huge pieces of wooded contructions up the slippery rickety fire escape stairs in the pouring rain (followed by many beers and heart to hearts), the benevolent Great Portland Estates looked kindly upon us and have offered theatredelicatessen a new home and a new beginning - the DIY/Immersive Experience/Squatter asthetic continues to thrive in London's West End, and we have continued stalwartly with our plans to mount the first major London revival of Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur.
I've spent this evening finally finishing the blurb for the flyers, a process that began when I first read, cover to cover, Plays2 by Phil, and is now, categorically, part of the final touches of our marketing plan about to go into overdrive. It's a task that has been difficult to complete until now simply because the play encapsulates so much inside just your own head that you just don't know where to start as a director let alone markteing PR type....and now of course there is FAR TOO MUCH to consider having had read through and two rehearsals with the cast and Phil himself.
How do you deal with a play that draws directly from Rwandan Genocide Survivors, that makes a simple read through degenerate into discussion of pre-GSCE kids going into the army as squadies to get a house and to learn to kill in an attempt to keep them from shooting random people in Tottenham, or revisiting images from Bazra and Kabul of macheted heads lined up outside the homes of their owners while restaurant patrons go about their daily lives, and yet another kid in South London stands up to bullying and intimidation and gets a bullet through his skull as thanks.
How do you begin to work on a play which forces anecdotes and confessions from a small group of strangers about drugs and sex and less rock more roll and suicide stories and bullying in school and being amazed at an ordinary tube journey turning into an adventure from a Robert Louis Stevenson novel - though clearly riding the Circle Line rather than a boat to a Scottish Island.
The thing is Mercury Fur is more about the 9 of us sharing those ideas and ideals than it is about the inevitable comparisons to modern living...the bond we already share, the fear in reviving such an infamous text, the sheer terror in living up to the expectations of the number of people who claim to adore Phil's work, the instant link that sparked between us all in the auditions. It may be a bit far fetched to say we all commit oursleves completely to doing as much as we can to keep the love between us sacred, but an element of fighting for each other and what we believe in, what and who we love must have already been forged for us to jump into the oblivion which will saturate our lives for the next few months.
What is it about the human condition that puts us in emotional and physical acts of violence to create and preserve peace and love and at least what we perceive to be worthy of our love and reconciliation? How far will we go for the people we love? Is there a finite, inevitablility about destroying the people we love most in order to save and protect them? You'll just have to come and see the show to find out...in the meantime, the Mercury Fur company have American Hot Pizza and Apocalypse Now hired...
