L.A.’s newest theatre company, Door Number 3, hits a home run on its first at-bat with its production of Radiant Vermin, now running at the Odyssey Theater. Written by British playwright Philip Ridley, the play is about as savage an attack on petty bourgeois values as you’ll ever encounter. The action of this ur-black comedy largely takes place within the confines of an old house (skeletal design by Pete Hickok), where a young couple, Ollie (Kapil Talwalker) and Jill (Britt Harris) learn they can have the house for nothing, thanks to a government scheme to repopulate and “reconfigure” a run-down neighborhood. The house may be lacking water and electricity, they are told by the brisk, officious government official, Miss Dee (Laura Faye Smith), but it’s theirs for the asking, as long as they agree to renovate it. Once that happens, Miss Dee asserts, other young couples will follow suit and the neighborhood will eventually return to life. From that seemingly rational plan, much irrationality follows. The house seems to be not only haunted but it also attracts some of the vagrants who have been hanging out in the blighted neighborhood. Ollie, with knife in hand, goes to scare off one of the (unseen) vagrants; a tussle ensues and Ollie kills the man. There is a magical result from this ghastly act: the fridge Ollie and Jill have been craving suddenly materializes—as well as the electricity to power it. There’s more magic to come. Ollie and Jill discover that, should they continue to kill vagrants, more consumer goods will be their reward. This presents them with a bit of a moral dilemma: is it worth killing another human being to get a fancy couch for your living room? They quickly decide that it sure as hell is. So Ollie and Jill gleefully go off on a killing spree, one which not only cleanses the neighborhood of its undesirables but enables them to furnish their dream house. That in turn attracts other yuppies like themselves who buy up the other ramshackle houses in the ‘hood and begin to glitz them up. The government reclamation plan has achieved its goal: the neighborhood becomes a “hot spot” for other upwardly mobile couples, who spend their time battling to see who can amass the most toys. Ridley’s all-out assault on capitalism’s predatory values keeps heating up as the play goes on, aided by the tour de force performances of Talwalker and Harris, who dazzle as they handle the playwright’s rat-tat-tat dialogue with amazing skill and ease, sometimes firing it at each other, other times directly at the audience. Ridley breaks the fourth wall when he pleases, tells his story without props or set pieces, just keeps the satire going at breakneck speed, mixing it with horror and blood, but somehow always getting laughs. Above all, he (and director Tim True) make sure not to let anyone in the audience off the hook. You’re just as greedy and covetous as Ollie and Jill, they remind us. So don’t go home feeling smug and superior.
