Toni (Georgie Henley) Photo Credit Kate Hockenhull.
Review by Simon Jenner, January 13th 2025
“Of course – as you’ve no doubt guessed – there’s a big ‘But Then’ moment heading this way…” 18-year-old Toni is by turns gawky and jokey. From someone who describes herself as a slug to the gazelle of a boy she’s about to receive a fist kiss from, you might think this a flicker of self-doubt. But doubts are for good reason. This is Philip Ridley, where horror and hilarity collide. His Tarantula first streamed during covid is revived at the Arcola Studio 2. Directed by Wiebke Green till January 25th, it stars Georgie Henley.
Stripped back, as best fits this space, everything depends on the actor and a little on Ciaran Cunningham’s spot-lighting that fines down into moments of fear; as if Toni is being tortured. And she’s twice under the knife. It’s quite probably the finest one-person show we’ll see all year. One of Ridley’s finest works is sleeked from the normal kinks of his spectral world. It conjures from Henley the performance of her life so far.
Toni (Georgie Henley) Photo Credit Kate Hockenhull.
Something’s just happened in a MacDonald’s and someone who’s watching this young couple in their first kiss is about to change both lives forever. Henley at first narrates an unnervingly bright-eyed naïve, straight-A student, Oxford-bound; who volunteers to help her school at a senior persons day. Her gawk and strut resemble not so much a slug as a gazelle taking their first steps after being born. Henley then adopts the full glare of meet-greet. Toni’s a natural people-pleaser; being adolescent, everything’s on steroids. Henley and Ridley are a great double-act in a single person. Henley’s naturally very funny. But there’s those sudden freezes.
Toni meets Michael, son of the organic caterer; they hit it off. Straight away there’s more agogic hesitations where Toni freezes for long seconds: it looks comic and feels unnerving. Throughout Henley’s confiding, rushing round the audience to garner support, as if to a roomful of schoolmates. “Are we on a date?” The brightness though is still turned up too much, like the relentless lighting. Then a wrong eye-contact and the tattoo of gang violence – a world her drop-out brother’s sussed in – descends.
Toni (Georgie Henley) Photo Credit Kate Hockenhull.
Henley’s performance during and after the attack she narrates is phenomenal. Cunningham’s lighting helps but doesn’t show quite why we’re in the grip of a performance that reminds one of Lisa Dwon in Beckett or Aiofe Duffin in A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing back in 2016. Henley narrates all voices from family, brother, Michael, the elderly and her head teacher. Her register’s formidable, the inhabiting consummate. But it’s as Toni that Henley’s true range asserts itself.
From her up-volume cheeriness and wide eyes there’s a sudden pop-eyed stare of terror: a badly-mimicked bird screech morphs to a scream. Henley’s PTSD, reliving the attack is the most hair-raising realisation of one I can remember for a long time. Along with the shuddering and stillness that in the central section contrast with the bright lights and frantic physical activity that surrounds it, there’s the beginnings of Toni’s storytelling.
It begins in coping with trauma recalls. Toni varies the story to exonerate herself (as if she needs to) to her gang-inflected brother. He first exhorts silence about what’s happened. Then the opposite. By then Toni changes her mind. What we see is someone telling themselves multiple versions. They read like a flickr of events where you might piece a truth. That impacts on how Toni starts telling her world to others.
Toni (Georgie Henley) Photo Credit Kate Hockenhull.
Toni (Georgie Henley) Photo Credit Kate Hockenhull.
And another world does emerge. One that surprises Toni too. The full-circle of another (very different) love, also like Michael a photographer is heart-warming, save that Toni tells the truth so slant it’s near horizontal. “Is this a date?” Toni, having once kissed, is as assured as Michael now. Echoes with the first encounter seem close. Even now Henley ambushes with a visceral freeze. Ridley is playing with our expectations. Even when something happens, can Toni own up to what has happened to trigger it?
And Henley is devastation incarnate. We’re left wondering not so much of the plea for forgiveness that has its backstory in that trauma, but what indeed circles with Toni’s last words, thrilling to the last breath. This stunning performance from Henley ought to garner awards.
Toni (Georgie Henley) Photo Credit Kate Hockenhull.
Toni (Georgie Henley) Photo Credit Kate Hockenhull.