CACTUS (Tramp)****

 

By Cal

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szHoTkohJko

Available until: Unknown

Trigger warning: Descriptions of physical violence (no visuals)

Philip Ridley started posting monologues at the start of lockdown. Some sources give the series the title of The Beast Will Rise, but this isn’t mentioned in the video description. Thirteen were posted in the first few months of lockdown, I believe all by different actors, and the last two were uploaded three days ago. This is the fourteenth.

The monologues are on an impressive variety of subjects. They all, as you’ve probably guessed, feature one actor, though as the monologue includes what other people say and do, the actors are effectively playing all the characters too. The shortest monologue is two minutes and twenty-two seconds; the longest is fifty-six minutes and sixteen seconds. They are fascinating and imaginative and the one-word titles tell you nothing about what you’re going to hear. I won’t review them all now, but my favourites are Gators and Eclipse. They’re both very different, but in both, Ridley creates new worlds which have strong elements of fantasy, yet I completely believe in them. The urgency of many of the monologues makes them feel as though they’re happening right now and we’re right in the middle of it.

Cactus is definitely one of the ones with urgency. At first, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Once it gets into the second half, it becomes more predictable, but hardly less urgent. You’re swept along by the story and the characters. There was a part of me that was dreading what might happen next – it seems there are no limits to Philip Ridley’s imagination – but I was also really caught up in the excitement and I couldn’t stop watching.

Actor Kyle Rowe is very sweet and charming and there’s no hint at first of the turn the story is going to take. Later on, he takes on the role of some very different characters, which he plays equally well. But there’s more than that – there’s always something in his performance that makes you question what’s going on and that raises the stakes even more.

As it says in the trigger warning, there is a scene with some quite horrible violence. It is just a monologue so we don’t see anything at all, but Philip Ridley tells us exactly what’s going on in detail and there are some graphic descriptions which not everyone will want to listen to. But not all the monologues are like this so if you don’t fancy this one, give one of the others a try. 

Finally, it’s always really nice to see a story with LGBTQIA characters where orientation and gender identification aren’t the most important thing in the story. There are times when it feels like the most important thing in your life, but a lot of the time, you’re just another person with your own problems and obligations and oh yes, I just happen to be gay and there will always be people who have a problem with that, but actually, it’s not the only part of my life that matters and some of the things that happen to me are nothing to do with my sexuality at all. It’s great to see stories that show that.