REVIEW: LEAVES OF GLASS by Philip Ridley at Park Theatre 16 Jan – 10 Feb 2024

'Ridley's play is brought back to life with flair and style' ★★★★

“I remember…” That’s the first line anyone speaks in LEAVES OF GLASS. But they don’t, really. Or do they? “Sometimes memory is not what you remember but what you’ve decided to erase,” playwright Philip Ridley explained when this play first opened, over 15 years ago. He wanted to write about brothers and mothers and family, and how impossible it is to agree on what happens between them: “That’s something that we experience the older we get: there’s no definitive truth about family life.”

There may not be a definitive truth, but almost all versions LEAVES OF GLASS offers up as options are horrifying. The story centres around brothers Steven and Barry, now adults who have somehow gone from scribbling Steven+Barry4Ever on their bedroom wall to a seesaw existence where the worse one is, the better the other seems. Steven (Ned Costello) the successful married businessman is seeing a ghost and is paranoid his wife is cheating on him. Barry (Joseph Potter) was the alcoholic failing artist fuck-up, but seems to have pulled it together. Every interaction between them is jagged and dangerous, all warmth ready to tip into violence.

Costello and Potter excellently contrast their brothers, while keeping you guessing about who got broken and how. Kacey Ainsworth pulls off her mother figure as both caring and deeply complicit, while Katie Eldred’s Debbie remains grounded, satisfyingly outside the vortex of family mind-games.

A shout-out to the design team: Kit Hinchcliffe (set and costumes), Alex Lewer (lighting) and Sam Glossop (sound) have done an exceptional job. They’ve created a glossy, splintered world that pulses us from one scene and setting to another, accomodating director Max Harrison’s whip-quick tempo, which makes his decision to play this almost 2-hour piece without an interval pay dividends. Light is put to particularly playful and metaphorical use, the characters engaging in power struggles over lamp cords and lit lighters that are funny until they become gut-wrenching. An extended scene in the dark near the end is the play’s show-case. (And starting to become a Park Theatre hallmark: I’ve watched them do a long section in darkness twice now, and I’m not complaining.)

This is a Ridley play, so the language is both brutal and beautiful, spinning out images of embers in black snow and popping eyeballs alike. Occasionally, the poetry becomes slightly too overt, distancing rather than drawing us into the emotional minefield. But there’s no denying its craft.

This is a revival that clearly cares deeply about its source text, and has brought it back to life with flair and style to spare.

Reviewed by Anna Clart

LEAVES OF GLASS by Philip Ridley at Park Theatre 16 Jan – 10 Feb 2024

Box Office https://parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/leaves-of-glass

Cast

Steven: Ned Costello

Debbie: Katie Eldred

Barry: Joseph Potter

Liz: Kacey Ainsworth

Creative Team

Writer: Philip Ridley

Director: Max Harrison

Set & Costume Designer: Kit Hinchcliffe

Lighting Designer: Alex Lewer

Sound Designer: Sam Glossop

Casting Consultant: Nadine Rennie CDG

Fight & Intimacy Coordinator: Lawrence Carmichael

Movement Consultatn: Sam Angell

Stage Manager: Alexandra Kataigida

Assistant Stage Manager: Sasha Reece

Assistant Director: Katarina Fuller

Marketing Team: Cup of Ambition

PR: Kevin Wilson PR

Dialect Coach: Mary Howland

Production Photography: Mark Senior

Graphic Designer: Marshall Stay

Videographer. Theatrical Solutions

Images Mark Senior