Okay, it’s quiz time, and today’s question is: who is the best British playwright to emerge in the past 20 years? Answers that tout the names Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Anthony Neilson get no points — too obvious. Naming Martin McDonagh or Jez Butterworth is okay, but a bit eccentric. David Greig is too obscure. Patrick Marber hasn’t written enough; Judy Upton has written too much. Roy Williams or Tanika Gupta are fair enough, but the winner, and only correct answer, is Philip Ridley — our theatre’s polymath genius.
‘The Fastest Clock in the Universe’ at Hampstead Theatre - © Manuel Harlan
The brilliant thing about Philip Ridley — whose 1992 East End gothic drama, ‘The Fastest Clock in the Universe’, is currently being revived at the Hampstead — is that he’s not only a great visionary but also a fab storyteller. Will Cougar in ‘Fastest Clock’ seduce the pants off the 16-year-old Foxtrot Darling? Can Presley and Haley Stray in ‘The Pitchfork Disney’ survive the incursion of Cosmo into their incestuous private world? Who will win the emotional showdown between Travis Flood and the girl gang in ‘Ghost from a Perfect Place’? These plays combine unforgettable moments of sheer beauty and excruciating anguish. The verbal imagery is stunning and the conflicts set the stage alight. Yes, this is the world of beautiful barbarism and magical menace. Dig those titles, and the character names! On every level, his plays are fun: they make you sit up and watch.
‘The Fastest Clock in the Universe’ at Hampstead Theatre - © Stefan Seiler
Ridley’s body of work, from ‘The Pitchfork Disney’ in 1991 to ‘Piranha Heights’ in 2008, is both varied and coherent. His characters inhabit secluded and strange worlds, an abandoned fur factory or a burnt-out East End flat, and their isolation gives their vivid fantasies both a memorable resonance and visceral bite: the effect is a bit like being dazzled by sunlight reflected by blood on razor blades. His plays are also shocking. His 2005 play, ‘Mercury Fur’, was so controversial with its drug-addled stories of ultra-violence, its filthy language and its air of menace that there were regular walkouts.
Years before the emergence of Kane and Ravenhill, Ridley was pioneering a gut-wrenching style of in-yer-face theatre that electrified audiences. Because he’d never been to drama school, having studied art instead at St Martin’s, he was a comparative outsider, and was thus able to innovate and develop an original and powerful theatre agenda at a time when most writers were penning mumble plays. Perhaps the true index of his originality is that he’s always been ignored by the Royal Court — the peak of the new writing establishment. When you’re shunned by the big boys, you must be onto something.
But Ridley is more that a great playwright: he’s also directed two outstanding films, ‘The Reflecting Skin’ and ‘The Passion of Darkly Noon’, and he wrote the screenplay for the gangland classic 'The Krays'. He’s also written dozens of other works: kids books, plays for young people, poetry, grown-up novels, as well as excelling in painting and photography. A full list of his work would take too much space: he’s a one-bloke creative industry. Check him out.
Aleks Sierz is the author of 'In Yer Face Theatre'
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Have never seen Ridley play before, but saw The Fastest Clock in the Universe at our iconic Curve Theatre in Leicester. My mother would not stop laughing, I have seen Joe Orton's plays but this takes the biscuit! Excellent acting in this production. Well done.
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