The Pitchfork Disney

Description

The Pitchfork Disney heralded the arrival of a unique and disturbing voice in the world of contemporary drama. Manifesting Ridley's vivid and visionary imagination and the dark beauty of his outlook, the play resonates with his trademark themes: East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix of the barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own. The Pitchfork Disney was Ridley's first play and is now seen as launching a new generation of playwrights who were unafraid to shock and court controversy. This unsettling, dreamlike piece has surreal undertones and thematically explores fear, dreams and story-telling. First produced in 1991, it has gone on to be recognised as the annunciation of Ridley's dark and seductive world.

Philip Ridley is a contemporary artist, poet, novelist, film-maker and one of the country's most celebrated living playwrights. Ridley has been described as 'probably a genius' (Time Out) and 'the best British playwright of the last 20 years' (Aleks Sierz, author of In-Yer-Face Theatre). His plays include Ghost From A Perfect Place, Mercury Fur, The Fastest Clock in the Universe, and Vincent River.

It's one hell of a play, Philip Ridley's The Pitchfork Disney . . . There's a deep artistry here and a searing vividness of imagination that leaves audiences shocked and subtly changed. * Scotsman * A drama that defined the era of "in-yer-face" theatre. * Evening Standard * Ridley's play, with its surreal fantasies, has an edgy, alarming potency of its own, the writing unfettered by any expectations of how a play should be. * Guardian * Flamboyantly grisly first play . . . it blazed a trail for the edgy style that the critic Aleks Sierz dubbed "in-yer-face theatre" . . . in its provocative poeticism, in its mixture of the dreamlike and the dangerous . . . it fed into later works by Jez Butterworth, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane and Anthony Neilson . . . a show that both depicts and deconstructs danger * The Times * A cornerstone of the 'in yer face' theatre movement . . . Trauma-riven denial glints darkly in the dank, soiled poetry of Ridley's prose. * Stage * Unsettling and gripping * Sunday Times * A portal through which we access long-suppressed childhood fears from which we emerge with a ghost-train passenger's sense of survival. * Jewish Chronicle *