on MERCURY FUR

Mercury Fur is a shocking play. There’s no denying this. Its language is violent. Its action is brutal. Its world is unhinged. It was shocking when I first read it and it continues to shock me today, months later.

There are many challenges that come with doing a play like Mercury Fur. Chief among them is this question of the value of shock. After all, we, as a theater company, ask a lot out of you, the audience. We ask that you pay money for the privilege of watching us perform. We ask that you give us your Friday or Saturday night. We ask that you put on a coat and do your hair and sit silently for two hours, staring straight ahead. These are sacrifices. So to then present you with something shocking and insist that you forsake your own contentedness in the name of some ambiguous, higher purpose might seem like a bit of a buzzkill. I mean, isn’t theater a medium of entertainment? Aren’t we here to make you happy? Isn’t this why you pay the money and put on the coat and do the hair?

The short answer is no. Theater is not just entertainment, it is art, and the job of art is to ask questions of its audience. If those questions are tough and if the answers are tougher, well then, all the better. This is why all theater isn’t sunshine and lollipops and Neil Simon.

Mercury Fur does ask tough questions. It is, after all, an undeniably sociological play. Its references to mid-20th century, global pop icons like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, along with primitive Aztec, Egyptian and Greek cultures suggests a path between the two that might be charitably described as a steep decline (though which end is the top and which is the bottom is a question up for debate). Meanwhile, its vague allusions to a series of devastating riots and its characters’ frequent, almost casual use of racial slurs take on a political tone when you look at the general escalation of racism in Western Europe and the race riots that broke out in England during the time that Philip Ridley wrote this play. The play doesn’t so much demand answers as show you how those answers are becoming increasingly grim. But to stop here when contemplating Mercury Fur is to do injustice to the play itself.

While researching the play, I looked into accounts of genocide in Rwanda in an attempt to provide our production with a real-life parallel to the sort of violence that is exhibited in the play. While interviewing a group of the killers who perpetrated this genocide, writer Jean Hatzfeld found himself—against his better judgment—developing an affection for these men. As he says in the book Machete Season:

“At first, I feel only natural hatred or aversion for them…But as time goes by, a kind of perplexity creeps in, which makes the Kibungo gang not more likable but less unpleasant to spend time with…Their friendly solidarity, their disconnection from the world they soaked in blood…their patience and serenity, and sometimes their naïveté, finally rub off on our relationship and touch particularly on their mysterious willingness to talk….Perhaps they feel the need to glimpse themselves as they were, even from this distance, in the stories they tell. Perhaps they are telling their stories to convince us they are ordinary…”

Mercury Fur seeks to convince us that, even amid the shocking brutality of its story, its characters are ordinary. They love one another. They stand up for each other. They are like us. There is a moment early in the play when brothers Elliot and Darren recite a sort of poem to each other that speaks volumes about the strange but recognizable warmth that is at the center of this play and that drew needtheater to it in the first place. It goes, in part, like this:

I love you so much I could chase you and chase you.
I love you so much I could grab you and grab you.
I love you so much I could punch you and kick you.
I love you so much I could make you bleed and bleed.
I love you so much I could kill you and kill you.
I love you so much I could burst into flames.


Mercury Fur opens tonight! Go to www.needtheater.org for all the details.