Ben
Brantley

August 19, 2015

Even those who binge on apocalyptic splatter movies are going to be rattled by “Mercury Fur,” Philip Ridley’s pitch-dark portrait of the day after tomorrow in the big city. Granted, this blistering production from the New Group, which opened on Wednesday night at the Pershing Square Signature Center, doesn’t have the big-screen special effects associated with cinematic gore fests about the end of the world. So, no, there are no exploding heads or melting cars, no meteoric balls of fire or giant mutants devouring human beings like candy. Mr. Ridley is working on the relatively small canvas of a derelict living room in an abandoned apartment. Yet he still manages to provide searing panoramic views of a blasted landscape overrun by monsters. I mean monsters like you and me — vulnerable human beings whom you might, under other circumstances, want to take into your arms and cuddle protectively. “Mercury Fur” has been unsettling people since it was first staged in Britain in 2005 (with a young Ben Whishaw in the cast), when it divided critics and theatergoers with a vehemence that brought to mind the appalled reception to “Blasted,” Sarah Kane’s 1995 account of a British city under siege. In The Telegraph, Charles Spencer described “Mercury Fur” as the work of a writer “turned on by his own sick fantasies,” and Mr. Ridley’s publisher, Faber & Faber, declined to publish the text.