needtheater’s newest offering Mercury Fur is brutal, heartfelt and authentic, and probably the best play I’ve seen this year. The mononymic Chicagoan Dado directs a spectacular young cast in this shocking dissection of the human animal inside of all of us.
The design features a rare treat: a curtain. In this case, a ratty blue tarp and soiled drop-cloth hides the set from the audience’s view like an unfinished room in an abandoned construction site, as if we are here to party with teenage squatters. Dado starts the action with voices from deep backstage, as if from a hallway, and by the time Eliot tears down the curtain to reveal the stage, the audience has only just caught on that the evening’s performance has begun. The ending of the play is not so inconspicuous.
Playwright Phillip Radley uses the play’s first moments to introduce us to brothers Eliot and Darren, two garbage-mouthed teenage vagrants whose family story and bizarre affection for each other are the center of the action. Eliot, who is played by a phenomenal Edward Tournier, dominates the younger Darren, ordering him around and tossing half-meant insults, calling him every slur on record, not excluding “a million miles of Paki afterberf.” Their dialects resemble the modern colloquial street-British familiar from the novels of Irving Welsh and Anthony Burgess, a way of speaking that at once forgives a voluminous vocabulary while dirtying up even the purest vowels.
Both brothers are lovable even as they wave a pistol around and set up the room for a diabolical private party, one where someone will surely die. They are the pawns of some lusty and exploitative off-stage power that dominates the local trade in hallucinogenic butterflies, the consumption of which has led to widespread brain damage and social ruin on an epic scale. The younger brother is an addict of this strange plague, the older is a dealer. We watch how endearingly Eliot cares for his dimwit brother, even as he feeds him little colored wings that poison his brain.
They express their love through fantasies of violence, and when the violence becomes real (and there is plenty of it) it feels natural, as if heinous murder were merely a feature of a hard-scrabble youth. They are joined by another lost boy, Naz, who likewise joneses for human affection even more than the taste of a delicate wing. Played with heartbreaking compassion and deference by Jason Karasev, Naz stands out by supporting the status of the other roles and bringing levity to a deathly earnest piece. He and Darren become fast friends, and in their interaction we see this drug’s fearful but muted effects. Their memories have been burned away, neither has anything more than hearsay to describe their past, yet they still share a humanity which is unsullied even by grotesque sexual urges and the inevitability of betrayal in an inhumane world.
Adam Riggs’ set is an abandoned flat roofed with ramshackle pallets, covered in garbage and graffiti, and adds a tactile dimension to the playwright’s sordid script. While some parts of the scenery seemed a bit flimsy, even a little dangerous in construction, the set dressing and use of space are very expressive and serve the play enormously. The characters spend much of the first hour cleaning the place up to make it a respectable locale for the ghastly fête. When the big players show up, including a menacing and stylish Greg Beam as Spinx, the gang’s ringleader, a violent game begins where devotion to family is put through an impossible test.
“Humans are a funny bunch,” the director notes, “They need to know their story. And they need to tell it.” Throughout Fur characters constantly exposite on their pasts, desperately trying, despite a powerful drug and a broken world, to remember who they are. They are driven by a need to survive, but even the cruelest among them acts from a place of love. These kinds of distinctions are easily drowned in a play as bloody as Mercury Fur, but Dado’s insightful direction has highlighted the most touching elements of a sadistic tale.
I don’t want to describe too much, for fear of clumsily revealing one of the script’s finer twists. All I can say is go see this play. It is scary, it does not pull punches. Almost every performance is extraordinary. The makeup and blood are terrifying. The plot is sickening and the characters are almost irredeemable. But somewhere in that ‘almost’ Ridley has found the human soul and driven a meat-hook right through its gut.
It features Edward Tournier, Andrew Perez, Jason Karasev, Greg Beam, Jeff Torres, Nina Sallinen, Kelly Van Kirk and Ryan Hodge.
Mercury Fur is by Phillip Ridley, this production is directed by Dado and produced for needtheater by Matt Wells and Micha Wylie. The Stage Manager is Kate Webster, Set Design is by Adam Rigg, Lighting Design is by Brandon Baruch, Costume Design is by Kat Marquet, Sound Design is by Ryan Poulson, Props are by Renee Peffer, Alison Kantrowich designs the Makeup and Dylan Southard is the Dramaturge.
Mercury Fur plays at the Imagined Life Theater (formerly 2100 Square Feet) 5615 San Vicente Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019 at Hauser and San Vicente, from May 29 -June 28th, Fri and Sat at 8 PM, Sun at 5 PM.
Tickets are $20, $17 for students and seniors.
For tickets visit www.needtheater.org or call 1-800-838-3006.
