Theater: Mercury Fur is a punch below the belt

I saw the remarkable Mercury Fur twice, since after one viewing I thought I missed some plot twists and dialogue, and because I wanted to sit closer to the violence. The play by Philip Ridley, an English pioneer in so-called "in yer face theater", defined on Wikipedia as "Vulgar, shocking, and confrontational material on stage as a means of involving and affecting their audiences", does just that, and left me exhilarated. He uses numbing violence somewhat like Quentin Tarantino does, but without the smugness and with an effort to make serious points. The production was stunning, set in a old warehouse, and requiring audience members to climb through the set and assorted debris to get to their seats (some of which were old dubious stuffed chairs). The play begins in complete darkness which is penetrated effectively by the young cast members entering with flashlights. From here on, the play and production relentlessly and effectively communicate the vibe of being in on the apocalypse, here populated only by people <30 who have survived the unnamed holocaust and are just trying to get by via means both normal (friendship, love) and shocking (human trade). 

The playwright, born in 1964, taps into themes more identified with millenials (all the actors were in their 20s, it appeared), such as sexual and gender flexibility and disillusionment. I was impressed how a playwright now in his 50s could write so rebellious a play, and one with so visceral a punch. A second viewing did not diminish the shock value of the ending, where a party guest is sacrificed ostensibly for appalling commercial reasons (one has to get by somehow when the world is ending), but which also took on quasi-religious significance. The closest analogy I see is to A Clockwork Orange, from a different era yet with the same intent to shock and cause the viewer to compare the portrayed cataclysm to one's own world. While avoiding use of unique language and jargon used in Burgess' novel, there was sufficient ambiguity regarding events (e.g "butterflies" of various colors consumed as hallucinogens) to achieve a similar effect of entering a world familiar yet unfamiliar. In the end, that is why Mercury Fur succeeds. It does what theater often strives for, but rarely achieves, i.e. immersing you in an artistic cocoon in which the outer world fades away for 2 hours.