“Playwright Philip Ridley’s black comedy is timely, original, and skillfully produced. Even when you realize what’s going on, small surprises and manifest reactions make taking the trip a buoyant pleasure. Ridley’s ending is priceless. Director David Mercatali straddles stylization (exaggerated, precise, sometimes incredibly rapid movement) and naturalism. The empty stage is well utilized with cogent mime. No point in analyzing. It works.”
Read more

"David Mercatali’s adroit production also feels like a theatrical game, albeit a hugely pointed one...Mr. Ridley casts a sidelong glance at contemporary mores with a satiric finesse worthy of his vaunted former countryman Jonathan Swift...Mr. Ridley has a field day setting the apparent sunniness of his young lovers against their escalating misdeeds in a play that questions whether we are our brother’s keeper or his destroyer."
Read more

"It’s a hysterically heavy-handed allegory for the ravages of gentrification...But ‘Radiant Vermin’ works because it’s dispatched with such flippant glee by the writer, cast and director David Mercatali. We laugh at Jill and Ollie because they’re so exuberantly unmenacing, and because we recognize that their killings aren’t really killings but a metaphor...It’s hard to feel too indicted when the whole thing is so frothily light and loopily enjoyable; the thing is it’s really enjoyable."
Read more

"Endlessly inventive…Every element of the show works perfectly, with the well-signposted birthday party from hell arriving as a suitable climax in what is an episode of bravura directing and acting. At this point, the sheer joy of the performers is wonderful to watch...Whether because of the heartbreaking testimony of a homeless woman, or the cast’s vivid representation of the temptations of consumer capitalism, 'Radiant Vermin' will shine brightly in my memory."
Read more

"It's a piquant little satire...Ridley makes it abundantly clear that social climbing implies a social cost, namely those tramped down underfoot, and he's sharp on the way one's blessings calcify into one's just deserts...David Mercatali's production has a real spring in its step, reveling in its cartoon violence and pastiching everything from 'Changing Rooms' to J.G. Ballard...Sean Michael Verey captures the quivering anxiety and wet-fish compliance of the capitalist workforce."
Read more

"A darkly funny morality play that implicates the audience without hitting it over the head…In outline, it sounds like one of those Ionesco plays of the 1950s in which an absurd premise is pursued with remorseless logic. But Ridley’s play is far subtler than that insofar as it shows how decent people are driven by desperation to stifle their consciences...Ridley suggests we live in a madly materialistic world where enough is never enough."
Read more

"It’s a deeply macabre, stingingly funny modern fairy tale that shows its two protagonists wading deeper and deeper into murky moral territory…It’s deliberately outrageous and surreal but Ridley pulls it off brilliantly, poking away at the remorseless temptations of consumerism and the desolate creed that 'enough is never enough.' In David Mercatali’s jaunty, precisely pitched production, Gemma Whelan and Sean Michael Verey give virtuoso performances as Jill and Ollie."
Read more

"Philip Ridley’s scathing, darkly comic and terrific play, 'Radiant Vermin', explores just how far we are prepared to go to get our dream home…His findings are bleak but the play around it is devilishly entertaining with tour-de-force performances and constant laugh-out-loud zingers…A terrific piece climbs another gear with a 20-minute section towards the end as a neighbourhood BBQ falls spectacularly apart...Brilliant!"
Read more