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A codeine-addicted failed artist blazes a messy trail through his little niece’s birthday party in this Philip Ridley monologue, which covers ground that’ll be bitterly familiar to anyone who's been exposed to small children while nursing a thunking hangover.
It’s a great gig for actor Joseph Potter, who tears around the stage, transforming himself impeccably into wired protagonist Sasha, his endlessly patient boyfriend Chet, his smug yummy mummy sister-in-law, and the array of bratty kids that fill this very middle-class Walthamstow get-together. Potter lands all the humour in the monologue, which is packed with misanthropic barbs aimed at the assembled company.
Clearly, this family has screwed the resentful Sasha up or over on a massive scale. It feels like something horrific is about to happen, something to rival the appalling, axe-murdering kids' party in horror classic ‘Parasite’. But Ridley holds back on the gore – somewhat surprisingly given this playwright's reputation as a ’90s peddler of in-yer-face chillers.
He wrote ‘Poltergeist’ during lockdown and it premiered over a Southwark Playhouse livestream in 2020: perhaps that explains its unexpectedly gentle, family harmony-promoting ultimate message. Director Wiebke Green stages this revival very simply – just Potter, on an empty stage – in a way that feels like a throwback to the financially straitened times of mid-pandemic theatre. In the current, slightly less apocalyptic era, this approach feels underpowered, and the cheery payoff feels a bit too pat.
Still, ‘The Poltergeist’ is a gripping reminder of just how good Ridley is at spinning a yarn. It's moving for the way it shows the agony of creative failure, with Sasha smashing glass ornaments or tearing pillowcases as a way of engraving his pain on his more successful brother's house. And there's something softly uplifting about its ultimate endorsement of the power of letting go, and leaving trauma in the past.