Nicky Silver’s absurdist black comedy Pterodactyls excavates to the bare bones the nuclear American family. In this Fudge Baldwin production of the play the dissecting of familial politics is accompanied by the gradual construction of a hanging papier-mâché dinosaur skeleton; Calum Suggett’s set design makes clear the symbolic extinction of Philadelphian high society. As Todd obsessively rebuilds this impressive set piece the Duncan family disintegrates, tensions mount and the façade flakes away to leave each character burning with postmodern angst.
The simple props and setting effectively emphasise the dinosaur in the room, while the shifting coloured lighting that accompanies the character monologues casts interesting and eerie shadows around the intimate theatre. Even from the back row of the Burton Taylor Studio I feel close and personal to the action, as though I’m another member of the Duncan family; hearing their confessions, party to their secrets which are by turn dark, shocking, and hilarious. Tom Dowling, playing the part of the brother and black sheep of the family, Todd, navigates these monologues with great success. His dead-pan tone and brooding looks deliver Todd’s explicit recounts of joyless sexual escapades with poetic fervency.
The opening scenes are full of unexpected humour, as the usual meet-the-inlaws awkwardness is made strange by mother Grace’s insistence that her prospective son-in-law Tommy take up the role of household cleaner. Kaiya Stone plays the part with a kind of nervous energy and an excellent upperclass American accent which suggests Desperate Housewives and one too many Xanax. Only too compliant, Tommy takes up cross-dressing, appearing on-stage in a comically skimpy French maid outfit. Ali Leverett in the role is attune to the audience’s amusement, camping it up to reel in the laughter. The dialogues between the betrothed Tommy and Emma, played by Ellie Lowenthal, are full of a farcical inexperience as the characters struggle to understand their sexuality. Ellie delivers her line that ‘There’s nothing to know. My breast’ll make milk.’ with a wide-eyed and girlish innocence which takes human nature back to its essentials. The characters’ naivety and their sense of displacement in their own household effectively captures Silver’s own comment that the play is about ‘systems of denial and the price they carry in the world today.’
A polished and compelling adaption, this production of Pterodactyls reveals with each satiric layer these ‘systems of denial’ and the taut emotional turmoil bubbling underneath.
