Mercury Fur

I am easily weirded out and this play definitely pushed me over the edge. There are butterflies (drugs) that ppl eat and it causes them to hallucinate. Different colored butterflies causes different hallucinations.
I was confused throughout the entire play. It wasn’t until the (very) end that I started to put pieces together after speaking to the cast and finally understood the story line.
The two main characters, the brothers, do tend to speak very quickly and it was difficult to understand what they were saying.
The play is very vulgar and explicit. My best friend invited me to the play and compared it to the killings in the hunger games book.
There is no intermission and the play is 2hrs long. I zoned out a bit. 2hrs is a long time to keep someone’s attention (no offense to the writer or performers).
I would not see this play again but the performance was riveting overall

Mr. Ridley is brilliant. The play is a devastating view of man in the midst of disintegration, merging images of past, dead civilizations and the savagery of our present relentlessly repeating itself into the future. Having said that, like most talented playwrights, Mr. Ridley doesn’t know how to pare down his imaginative dialogue. By the end of the play, I was so psychologically inurred to savage images and ugly expletives, that the climax had little impact. An intelligent, literary, director could easily lop off about thirty minutes of this play which would, I think make it more effective. I thought Tony Revolori (as Naz), Emily Cass McDonnell (as Duchess) and Paul Iacono (as Lola) performed very well, the others performed well, with the exception of Jack DiFalco as Darren. Mr, DiFalco rushed his lines and spoke as if he had hot potatoes in his mouth, so that I could not understand anything he said for most of the play and he threw the pace off of the other actors. I should have felt something for his character, but did not. The ushers did not give out playbills at the beginning of the play, stating that the «production» wanted playbills given out at the end. There were no playbills at the end. I had to chase down an usher who got one for me from a small carton in a back room. I guess they didn’t print enough. I do recommend this play if you like serious theater, but make sure you don’t forget to get your playbill!

First, the actors and actress are above average. I give them credit for participating in this long challenging play.
Second, I feel the play is very confusing, unnecessary details that just bogged down the flow and made me loss interest in characters.
In summary– drugs, gangs and the degenerates of humans set in a background of a post-​apocalyptic London slum.
The characters can be discussed deeper in many ways but it is just too much to take in and the ending lack any punch or significance.
Two hours straight with no intermission is also difficult to sit through. While walking out of this play I heard comments from some audiences loving it, some did not, and some just looked confused like me.

This play takes place in post apocalyptic London’s East End. Gangs and drugs rule their neighborhood. The drugs are weird. The drugs come in form of hallucinogenic butterflies. These drug butterflies suppress feelings. I could never touch a butterfly. It’s all bugs to me. Just the other day I freaked out because a butterfly flew near me. My bf told me they don’t bite, it’s not the point. it’s still a bug with creepy legs. Anyways the gangs sell these hallucinogenic butterflies for money. But they also have other income sources. One of which is to throw parties for rich folks. But not just any party These parties are pretty wild because these wealthy folks get to act out their amoral fantasies. The play mainly is set at one of these parties where these rich folks are murdering a boy!!! Apparently the butterfly illusions are not enough and they seek a more real and horrific fantasy that is acted out in reality. The play is 2 hours with no intermission. It was way too long, way too weird, way too much talking, way too odd. There were parts of the play where I could not hear well, part of it is the actors are speaking too fast and there was no microphones, at least it seemed like there was no microphones. There was also an older gentleman near me that had a lot of feedback from his headphones. There was a high pitched shrill through most of the show from him. How annoying. People around us were leaving the show. I felt that was rude of them because people who leave in the middle of a show are disturbing others, moving around, making noise.
I was talking to my dentist the other day and we were saying even a bad play is good when you go see live theater… in this case, this bad play is bad. Makes the other mediocre plays I’ve seen lately, a little better.
This play is playing at the The Pershing Square Signature Center from August 5 to September 27. There are tickets that start at $ 25 which is actually the reason why I love the Signature Center Theatres.