DBC Pierre was hailed as literature’s answer to Eminem when his mouthy satire ‘Vernon God Little’ won the Booker in 2003. Tanya Ronder’s 2007 adaptation at the Young Vic picked up the manic neon shades of his tale of smalltown Texas,where Vernon Little (a kind of white-trash Holden Caulfield) is blamed for the mass-murder of 16 schoolmates. But, when I first saw it, it didn’t equal the helter-skelter energy and sheer ranting display of Pierre’s prose.
Four years on, and Rufus Norris’s production has found its lungs. Vernon, his lonesome Momma, her fried-chicken-gobbling diva of a best friend and a supporting cast of nymphos, homophobic cops, evil hacks and paedophile psychologists who express their characters in music. This being Texas, souls are fed by everything from line-dancing country and western to rap. The tunes reveal the haunting undertow of sorrow and anger in this spangled world of tat – and designer Ian McNeil channels the trailerpark spirit of transitory flamboyance in a set whose walls are golden tassels and whose castor-footed sofas zip around the stage like dodgems whenever a roadtrip or a car chase is required.
‘Vernon God Little’ has lost some of its sting. Post-Tea Party, the homophobia of the American right seems a less primary target than it did in the culture wars of the ’90s and early noughties. Finger-lickin’, gun-lovin’ hypocrisy hasn’t gone away, but there are times when this venal, dumb chorus seem like straw quarries and this parody like old-fashioned hick-bashing.
Still, the liberal London audience laughs along. And the cast is excellent. You can smell the arrogance and cologne in Peter de Jersey’s portrayal of prize sleazebag Lally, the TV-repairman with a lust for fame who is Vernon’s nemesis. And Joseph Drake makes an exceptional debut as Vernon, bringing subtlety and sweetness to a kid who is dismissed as a human skidmark by everyone, including his own mother.