Children have a great potential to disturb. The horror film stereotype of the emaciated, creepy little girl is testament to how potently agitating it can be to place the young into violent settings in which their innocence has no place.
Philip Ridley’s The Pitchfork Disney extrapolates this unease into an adult world, imagining the existence of two adults, alone for ten years, who cannot escape the mentality and the rituals of their childhood. Presley and Haley, played by Sam Caird and Charlotte Norris, are sinister from the outset, their gleeful gorging and flights of fancy counterbalanced by their shrill and intensely physical confrontations.
The cast are, without fail, excellent at portraying this surreal world. Sam Caird’s Presley is particularly shocking. His sickeningly evocative description of the fate of one pet was – if it’s possible to describe something so hideous as such – a high point, and Will McCallum’s bullying Cosmo Disney combines a mastery of playground politics with deep-seated insecurity and terrifying irrationality.
The agonizing, physical fear Charlotte Norris’ Haley exudes gives her intense vulnerability, which is masterfully exploited. They all convey a deeply unsettling juxtaposition between the grotesqueness of their reality and the simplicity of their mindset. They seem to immerse themselves into their roles, with their lisping tones and childish syllabic stress emulating the language of a child perfectly without losing sight of the tone. They manage to avoid sounding like an irritating couple trying to be cute, instead using the infantile language to add to the intensity.
This is a play that refuses to allow the audience even the tiniest glimmer of comfort. Even in the calm, sunny setting of this short preview, there was a disquieting sense of voyeurism. Moments of fleeting calm are overwhelmed by a portentous, palpable sense of unease, which repeatedly climaxes in the characters’ hysterically violent dramatic monologues. Their memories are incredibly vivid and invariably disturbing, frequently teetering on the fine line between innocence and callous sadism.
This is not a play that will be easy to forget. If you can cope with such immersive intensity, don’t miss it.
Four stars
