‘i could squeeze a bullet between those lips.” “I could get a spoon and prise it in your eye sockets.” “I could squeeze a grenade up there.”
Such are among the not-so-tender declarations in Philip Ridley’s new play “Tender Napalm,” whose oxymoronic title suggests its deeply contradictory views of love. This portrait of the relationship between an unnamed Man (Blake Ellis) and Woman (Amelia Workman) is the sort of pretentious, pseudo-poetic claptrap that’s easily mistaken for profundity.
The actors begin by engaging in strenuous physical warm-ups — shadowboxing, among them — before unleashing a fusillade of words. But despite their tightly choreographed movements, the real workout here is emotional.
Performed on a narrow strip of a stage, with rows of theatergoers on either side, the 100-minute piece induces claustrophobia. Several people fled the theater midway through, even though it sometimes meant literally dodging the performers.
Apparently trapped on a deserted island after a devastating tsunami — “Have you seen the view?” is an ominously oft-repeated line — the pair engage in a heated verbal pas de deux laden with heavy doses of fantasy. There are detailed descriptions of encounters with giant serpents and unicorns, and a “dildo shaped like a dolphin from the lost city of Atlantis.” These are frankly less arresting than the pair’s descriptions of each other’s genitals as “precocious” and “perky.”
Eventually, we realize we’re witnessing the course of a relationship in reverse chronological order, ending with the couple’s meeting at a party as teenagers. It’s only in this scene, when the young man tearfully talks about the impending death of his father and she consoles him, that the writing displays any real emotional truth.
Under the precise direction of Paul Takacs — Yasmine Lee is credited with “movement” — the actors deliver performances of admirable emotional and physical conviction. By the time the seemingly endless “Tender Napalm” is over, they’re obviously exhausted — though perhaps not as much as their audience, who’ve had to suffer in silence.