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The Pitchfork Disney

 
Richard Beck Review by Richard Beck 5 Published: 5 Sep 2025 King's Head Theatre Show Dates: 27 Aug 2025-6 Oct 2025

Philip Ridley was already known as a visual artist and screenwriter (The Krays) when his first professional stage play was performed at the old Bush Theatre in 1991. The Pitchfork Disney took the theatre world by storm. Now acclaimed as a seminal work, it received a mixed reception at the time: mostly negative from established critics, but positive from young audiences who relished the power, complexity and vivid imagery of his writing, and the brazen affront to dramatic norms.

An engrossing, mesmerising and disquieting theatrical triumph

Haley (Elizabeth Connick) and Presley (Ned Costello) live in isolation. It’s ten years since an unspecified event took their parents away, and nothing has changed in the house they grew up in. They have barely matured, still behaving as children. The only growth has been in their fear of the outside world – and their love of chocolate.

Kit Hinchcliffe’s design and Ben Jacobs’s lighting faithfully create the ‘dimly lit room in the East End of London’ with furnishings that are ‘worn and faded’. The pallid palette runs through the walls, the fabric of the shabby sofa and the carpet. Along with the wooden table and chest of drawers, everything belongs to a bygone age.

Their lives revolve around stories, some based on past events and wildly embellished, others drawn from a post-apocalyptic vision of a world in which only they and their house survive. They listen with biblical devotion to each other retelling these tales, sometimes interjecting with an extra detail which is then absorbed into the next version. Both deliver remarkably intense, fast-paced monologues: two highly animated ones early on from Connick, followed later by a five-page belter from Costello (one of the longest ever written for the stage).

They shun the outside world and relationships, except their own as non-identical twins. Presley reluctantly visits the corner shop, but Haley never ventures out, always successfully arguing her case to remain in the safety of the house. Five front-door locks guard against intruders – in their minds, only minimal protection against who or what might enter. Haley trusts Presley never to let anyone in, but one day he sees a tall, 18-year-old blonde Adonis getting out of a car and opens the door while she is deep in her daily drug-induced sleep.

Presley sees in Cosmo (William Robinson) someone who might give him the recognition he craves – the sort his father used to give him with a pat on the head. Although the air simmers with sexual undertones, Presley makes his position clear: “I am not a homosexual. I just want you to say my name.” Now the tension really mounts. Robinson’s Cosmo has an unnerving, menacing demeanour, his behaviour able to change on a whim. But the truly terrifying experience comes with the entrance of his performance partner, Pitchfork Cavalier (Matt Yulish), a latter-day Darth Vader who cannot speak but makes chilling noises. That these figures are recognisably human makes their words and actions all the more daunting.

It’s a play of contrasts: the past and the present; the real and the imaginary; logical arguments derived from irrational premises; spaciousness and claustrophobia. The most grotesque figure is also the gentlest. Power and control is a battleground for the twins, but Cosmo takes it to another level, showing the malign manipulation and darkness of human nature in full force. If Cosmo feeds his obsession with money by eating cockroaches as part of his pub act, Presley is coerced into doing so as an act of submission.

If you want to know what all the fuss was about in 1991, visit the King’s Head Theatre, Islington, for this stunningly performed production, brilliantly directed by Max Harrison for Lidless Theatre. It’s an engrossing, mesmerising and disquieting theatrical triumph.

Amir Nisi

Richard Beck

A graduate in theology and education, Richard acted and contributed to dance, drama and music productions throughout his teaching career. He joined Broadway Baby in 2014 and is now our Editor-in-Chief. He usually disappears to warmer climes for the winter to pursue his passion for travel.

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The Blurb:

Ten years ago something terrible happened to Presley and Haley. Since then they've lived alone in their dead parents’ house, doors bolted against the terrors of the world. But, one night, Presley sees a beautiful stranger on the street outside. And while his sister sleeps… he invites in their worst nightmare.

Darkly comic and deeply unsettling, Philip Ridley’s seminal masterpiece single-handedly changed the course of British drama.

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