TARANTULA (Aria Entertainment/Southwark Playhouse)****

By Cal

Link: https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show-homepage/tarantula

Available until: Livestreams on 3.15pm and 7.45pm on Saturday 1^st May. Although advertised as livestreams, they are available for a few hours after the event. A lot of Southwark Playhouse shows are made available on demand after the event so if you do read this after Saturday, it might be worth checking the Southwark Playhouse and Stream Theatre sites to see if it has been made available, but don’t just assume that will be the case – grab the opportunity to see it now if you can.

Philip Ridley has kept us all brilliantly-entertained throughout lockdown, first with his The Beast Will Rise series and then with The Poltergeist, which was so good, I watched it twice – and there isn’t a lot of room in my online theatre schedule to watch things twice. Not forgetting the small matter of university taking up my time.

THE POLTERGEIST (Tramp/Southwark Playhouse/Stream Theatre)*****

 

By Aashiq

Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/17

Available until: further livestreams Saturday 21^st November at 3pm (captioned) and 7.30pm.

Philip Ridley has released lots of brilliant monologues in the The Beast Will Rise series on the Tramp youtube channel, but this is my favourite of all. It’s a great story with great characters and I think there is a lot in the story that most people can relate to, even if not everyone goes to quite the same extremes.

ROSEWATER (Tramp)*****

 

By Aashiq

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UnHq07HDm4

Available until: Unknown

I love seeing the one-word titles of Philip Ridley’s The Beast Will Rise series and trying to guess what it might be about. It could be about anything. There’s a flavoured water called rosewater. It can be used in recipes or on your skin or hair or it can be used for a perfume or aromatherapy. Google says you can also buy it in Waterstones, but I think google is lying. It’s always lying. Unless there’s a book called Rosewater, I suppose.

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.