Theatre
Radiant Vermin
Tron Theatre, Glasgow
In every dream home there is heartache and a whole lot more in Philip Ridley’s 2015 play, which receives its Scottish premiere in Johnny McKnight’s dangerously madcap Tron company production. Here we’re invited in to Jill and Ollie’s remade and remodelled des-res in the tellingly named Gilead Close, where the young couple take stock after being tempted away from the roughhouse estate they were previously stuck in by a pink-clad saviour calling herself Miss Dee.
Like a garishly clad snake in Eden, Miss Dee offers Jill and Ollie a new house for free. Only the much needed renovations of their new abode are the couple’s responsibilities. With the Faustian pact signed, sealed and delivered, Jill and Ollie take their upwardly mobile ascent on board with relish. In an urban wasteland rife with homelessness and crime, their discovery of a short cut to home improvements transforms both their lives and the neighbourhood. With the traditional local demographic biblically wiped out, Gilead Close is very much on the up.
Ridley’s play is a gloriously fantastical dissection of the sort of social engineering and gentrification that is at the heart of Britain’s housing crisis, delivered with an ingeniously wicked sense of satirical fun. This tone is picked up here by McKnight with similarly venomous intent.
The double act of Dani Heron and Martin Quinn play Jill and Ollie with a rapid-fire delivery that becomes a kind of absurdist vaudevillian confessional. Heron and Quinn’s grotesque series of impressions of the couple’s assorted neighbours from hell becomes a show-stopping routine in itself. Similarly, as Miss Dee, Julie Wilson Nimmo frames everything she does with an arch malevolence that suggests a more celestial power at play.
Played out on designer Kenny Miller and lighting designer Emma Jones’ house shaped light box set, and punctuated by Patricia Panther’s glitchtronic soundscape, McKnight’s increasingly manic production ramps up the anxieties of the property ladder with abandon. Whatever Miss Dee promises in this devilishly incisive affair, the crash is inevitable.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here