Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Explosive, erotically-charged two-handers: Ken Urban’s A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK and Philip Ridley’s TENDER NAPALM

• By drediman
• January 3, 2025
• No Comments

This fall/winter, New York theater audiences have been able to sink their teeth into a pair of explosive, erotically-charged Off-Broadway two-handers. These would be Ken Urban’s A Guide for the Homesick and a revival of Philip Ridley’s Tender Napalm. As always, read on for my thoughts.

A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK
DR2 Theatre
Through February 2

Ongoing at the DR2 Theatre just east of Union Square is the New York premiere of A Guide for the Homesick (RECOMMENDED), Ken Urban’s 2017 play depicting the unlikely encounter between a pair of young, troubled American tourists — both of whom seem to be struggling with their sexuality — during a rain-drenched night in Amsterdam. Peviously seen at Huntington Theatre Company, the two-hander features intimate, stuttering exchanges that gradually dig deeper and grow in confidence. Indeed, only about halfway through the one-act play does it achieve — by design, as the two characters more meaningfully feel each other out — a discernible dance-like cadence. Although the parallels in the characters’ circumstances seem just a tad on the nose (no spoilers here) and the subject matter of coming is a bit less urgent than it once was, Urban’s exploration of the relationship between guilt and sexuality is nothing less than fascinating. Like Ben Ahlers and Victoria Pedretti in the recent Tender Napalm revival — which I discuss below — McKinley Belcher III and Uly Schlesinger flip-flop between emotional extremities with astonishing clarity and ease (again, no spoilers here as to why), especially the case of the chameleonic and captivating Belcher. Throughout, their sexual chemistry and emotional vulnerability are convincing as they wrenchingly tug-of-war themselves to a state of reckoning.

TENDER NAPALM
Theaterlab
Closed

Then there was the recent anticipated revival of the Off-Broadway revival of Philip Ridley’s vivid 2011 two-hander Tender Napalm (RECOMMENDED) at TheaterLab. The work is both fantastical and devastatingly frank as it charts the volatile relationship between two young lovers as they navigate the contours of their intense emotions towards each other. The play is captivating in its raw and unvarnished depiction of the mercuriality of love, particularly as sustained and driven by spiteful aggression and throbbing sensuality. In the process, Ridley conjures a visceral and theatrical world manifested by vivid mythological landscapes, as well as the aching vulnerability of what we know as “reality”. There’s real danger in the playwright’s evocative and elemental language, which thankfully carries to the no-holds-barred performances — kudos to the fearless performances by Ben Ahlers (familiar to many for his featured role in the television series The Guilded Age) and Victoria Pedretti (The Enemy of the People), both of whom dazzlingly alternate between tenderness and brutality — and director Rory McGregor’s stripped-down yet theatrically dynamic production.