Review: The Pitchfork Disney (King's Head Theatre)

Review by Sam Waite

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Note: The Pitchfork Disney contains numerous elements which some theatregoers may find distressing, a full summary of which has been provided by the venue here

All too often, a story spreads that a piece of work is so shocking that people simply can’t tolerate it. If it’s not a film so frightening that Netflix viewers can’t bring themselves to finish it, it’s a first-look clip causing event attendees to leave the room – and so often, there is some other detail that explains away the incidents. So, you can understand my cautious disbelief at stories of audience members fainting during the premiere run of Philip Ridley’s The Pitchfork Disney, and the supposed discussions around having medical staff on-site for each performance. Having now seen this new production at the King’s Head Theatre, I’m still dubious, but can certainly agree that Ridley’s debut play was, and still is, a truly unsettling experience.

Brought back to London by Lidless Theatre, The Pitchfork Disney opens on an ordinary evening at home for siblings Presley and Haley. On their own since the death of both parents a decade before, the pair find themselves in what seems to be one of many frequent squabbles, over who last did the shopping and whether their hefty supply of chocolate fairly caters for each’s taste. With six locks on their front door, seven if you include the keyhole, they are well and truly cut off from the world. As Haley falls asleep, Presley notices an attractive and visibly ill man outside the house, and his impulsive decision to bring the man into their home results in a soul searched, memories brought back to the present, and emotional devastation’s rise to the surface.

A point of much criticism when Pitchfork premiered in the 90s, Ridley’s script has since been heralded as welcoming in an era of “In-Yer-Face” theatre which aims to challenge and discomfort its viewers in equal measure. Director and Lidless co-artistic director Max Harrison notes in the programme that Ridley’s work has been called surreal but to him is all-too-real, and perhaps the truth lies somewhere in-between. The script is startlingly timeless, at once a period piece and a story firmly in the present – there’s a dreamlike quality to every moment, with the way these characters live their lives lost between a harsh reality and a comforting, but chilling, fantasy life.

Elizabeth Connick commits fully to her performance as Haley, bringing to life the petulance of a young woman whose emotional development has been noticeably stalled, perhaps even regressed, since her parents’ passing. Continued references to their status as “good children” and the use of a dummy to provide a mysterious medicine suggest the nearly-thirty-year-old twins are permanently stunted by an unknown trauma, and Connick’s boisterous, tantrum-throwing turn helps us immediately understand that, in many ways, Haley is much less an adult woman than she may appear to be. Ridley’s script side-lines the character for much of the play in having her fall into a drugged sleep, but Connick makes the most of these early moments to leave a mark on the production.

While much of the horror in The Pitchfork Disney’s unsettling blend of fear, comedy and psychology comes courtesy of Pitchfork, the hulking, non-speaking figure brought to masked life by Matt Yulish, it is William Robinson’s Cosmo Disney who truly inserts terror into the evening. Cosmo is at once an aggressor and an investigator, as overfamiliar with Presley as he is careful to keep him at arms’ length. Robinson finds the right balance of fascinated interest and cruel mocking to keep Presley, and the audience, from ever fully grasping his motivations – he may well have no goals in mind, and simply be reacting to the encounter in real-time, with Robinson’s blend of youthful mania and almost-parental sternness as captivating as it is discombobulating.

Having previously worked with Harrison on Leaves of Glass, another Philip Ridley play, to great acclaim, it is perhaps unsurprising that Ned Costello’s turn as Presley is so fully formed and in line with the production’s vision for the character. Whether you perceive the play as being about the impacts of trauma on development, a refusal to engage with new feelings or desires, the threat of what lies outside of our own understanding, or outright xenophobia, (“There’s a pretty boy and foreigner outside our house and you’re telling me to calm down!” Haley exclaims early in the evening) it’s Presley who must navigate these themes before our eyes. You’ll understand, therefore, if I suggest that Presley’s actor has a hefty weight placed on his shoulders.

Thankfully Costello is more than up for the challenge, letting his performance drift between a child-like state of innocence and a falsely-machismo display of the kind of man he feels he ought to be as the (seven minutes) older sibling. There’s a wishful deference to Presley’s interactions with Cosmo, something between a longing for a paternal figure and a hint of a schoolboy crush (more than a hint, should your interpretation lean that way) and the blend of boyishness and moments of bravado Costello brings to the role cement this complex, emotionally fraught new connection as one that is difficult to gauge, even (or especially) from within. With the character having allowed his sister to be the more histrionic, less controlled sibling, Costello’s eventual breakdown into emotional anguish is all the more powerful for our having waited, and for the show having earned it.

As I mentioned before, there is an element of comedy mixed into the psychological and physical horrors Cosmo and Pitchfork introduce into the proceedings, and the play does succeed in scoring several laughs. Admittedly, some of the laughter on press night seemed to come from nerves, or from the sheer discomfort of a particularly quiet moment which is followed with an unsettling display of “singing.” Ridley’s script, as guided by Max Harrison, has the curious habit of allowing the siblings’ childlike innocence to become a source of comedy, before quickly reinforcing Cosmo’s cruelty towards Presley to remind us that as funny as it may seem to be, this naivete leaves them open to serious harm, both bodily and emotionally.

A fan of Harrison’s (and Lidless’) production of Miss Julie, I noticed similarities in how the director uses space, how he moves his actors so as to suggest limitless scale and possibility beyond the cramped environments in which the shows are set. Seemingly having subsided on mainly chocolate for some time, and having not a hint of internal lives beyond their shared homelife, Harrison’s Presley and Haley inhabit their living room as if it is the whole world to them, as if anything beyond it is too grand to imagine, or else too frightening to comprehend. Coupled with Kit Hunchliffe’s dreary, realistically barren single-room set, the impact of this is subtle, but once noticed is staggeringly powerful.

Far more finely-honed minds than mine have thrown out their ideas about what The Pitchfork Disney is truly about, and how it came to be such a success among younger theatregoers while critical reception was more divided, particularly on the script. Harrison states that the show is one for now, that it is always a play for now, whenever now may be. I’m inclined to agree – so much of the narrative’s meaning, the characters’ motivations and guiding philosophies, is up for debate that The Pitchfork Disney truly can be, even should be, about whatever it is that you find the most uncomfortable, and which you are tying hardest to keep out of both your thoughts and your life.

The Pitchfork Disney plays at the King’s Head Theatre until October 4th

For tickets and information visit https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/the-pitchfork-disney-9qn5

Photos by Charles Flint