Philip Ridley and memory

Abstract

ABSTRACTPhilip Ridley's nine plays written for an adult audience all share a concern with the role of memory and of remembering. Attempts to recuperate an authentic past by challenging an accepted, acceptable but inaccurate mythology of the past recur in the plays from The Pitchfork Disney (1991) through to Shivered (2012). Failure to preserve the past is critiqued in some of the plays, while struggles to come to terms with the past are celebrated in others. In all the plays, the necessity of struggling to tell a story that serves to reconcile the present person with his or her past is celebrated; and the profound experience of tragic catharsis is often the object of that struggle, whether the outcome is achieved or not. In Vincent River (2000), Mercury Fur (2005) and Leaves of Glass (2007), the function of memory is presented in strongly contrasting ways that generate both an account of the necessity for personal and cultural memory to be retained and a critique of comforting untruths. The contrasting approaches to memory are underpinned by differing dramaturgical approaches in which either the vocal or the physical is privileged.