Tarantula at Arcola Theatre

I have a Google Alert running for Philip Ridley and I believe that I have seen every production of his plays in London over the last ten years or so (and one in Brighton too) so I was always going to go to see Tarantula and it was a nice bonus that it was on at Arcola Theatre, one of my very favourite theatres and where my love affair with the works of Philip Ridley began in 2014.

Tarantula was a new piece for the stage (it had been done online) but I had some idea of what to expect as it was part of a series of monologues that I saw in 2018. One of the actors then was Georgie Henley and it was pleased to see that she was doing Tarantula.

Some of his other monologues from that period are still on line at We Are Tramp and are well worth watching.

These monolgues are of various lengths had the usual Ridley mix of darkness, surrealism, real life, comedy and savage twists, all the things that make me love the plays so much.

Tarantula is narrated by a young woman (or man, it does not matter which) who lives at home with her parents, an elder brother and a much younger sister. She falls in love, twice, and we here the details of chance encounters, first hesitant dates and the consequences of unexpected events.

The first romance ended particularly badly, thanks to the spider, hence the need for the second. 

The play was incident rich and had me fully engrossed for ninety minutes, so much so that the lights going off came as a complete surprise. The way the scenes were string together reminded me a little of Under Milk Wood with the first romances being used as the thread to link the stories. Each romance was a major plot line across the stories with the first ending violently and the second ambivalently (much as Gators had).

Tarantula was sold out so I guess there are quite a few Ridley fans out there and we saw a play that had all of his hallmarks, which is all that I hoped for. We also saw an astonishing solo performance that included a lot of emotion, movement, expression and words. It was award winning stuff and I suspect that the awards will come.

Tarantula was a reminder of what makes Philip Ridley so special and also of how good and actor Georgie Henley is and why Arcola Theatre is such a good venue. Three out of three.