Ridley Plays: 2: Vincent River; Mercury Fur; Leaves of Glass; Piranha Heights

This second volume of Ridley's stage plays confirms him as one of themost imaginative, daring and unique voices currently working intheatre. All four plays collected here resonant with Ridley's trademarkthemes - East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix ofthe barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own. Vincent '... a grieving mother and a traumatized teenagermeet as adversaries, rough each other up and eventually bond over abarbaric act of cruelty...Ridley asksquestions, lots of them, about how people respond to the loss ofinnocence in their lives, how they hold onto their sanity in the faceof savagery and how they fight to keep the bonds of humanity intact ina mad, mad world.' Variety Mercury '...depicts a scary, post-apocalyptic London where, intheir struggle to survive, a group of youths are reduced to organisingparties that cater for the most perverted tastes.' Independent Leaves of 'There is a different kind of murder going on the murder of truth that goes on in all families to a lesser or greaterdegree. As with nations, a family's history is written by the victors.' Guardian Piranha 'The extravagance of Ridley's dark vision suggests adangerously confused society in which individuals seize on randomgobbets of semi-digested information and use them to construct theirown personal narrative.' TheTimes