Everyone has their own reaction to a piece like Mercury Fur, but what attracted me to this play was its central tenet that language and stories define our humanity. The telling of stories in the play draws the characters together and the remembering of their histories define their identities. When language and memories crumble away, these characters lose something of themselves in that deterioration. As theatre itself is a form of storytelling, I was drawn to this affirmation of the importance of telling and retelling our stories. Mercury Fur is written by British storyteller Philip Ridley, but I have seldom read a text that seems so immediate and present. It is a play about young people today and the society into which they are born.
Ridley sets the play in his local neighborhood, the East End of London, but this degenerated city could be anywhere in the world. In our production of Mercury Fur, the actors are using their own natural accents, because this dystopia could certainly be any city and these characters could easily be us. These are ordinary young people surviving despite enormous trauma, fighting for survival not just for themselves but for each other.
Photo: Luke Mullins as Elliot (photograph by Dan Stainsby)
