The Arcola’s Studio 2 is bare, a stripped space of exposed brick and sharp light. Into it walks Louis Davison, and for the next eighty minutes he barely lets it rest. Philip Ridley’s The Poltergeist is back, and Davison hurls it at the audience with stamina that feels impossible. He is Sasha, once a teenage art prodigy, now broke, medicated, and dragged to a family birthday party where ghosts of memory and resentment crowd the room.

Ridley’s writing always ricochets between bitter comedy and bruised honesty. One moment Sasha is riffing, “It’s not a film set, it just feels like one sometimes. Are those real pineapples or fake plastic props?” The next, he sinks into fury.

“Everything here is a shitty charade.”

Davison handles these switches with precision, shaping whole conversations between characters, then snapping back to Sasha’s interior monologue without missing a beat.

The party is a minefield of siblings, partners, and old grudges. We hear Sasha spit, “My brother ruined everything for me. You know that, don’t you?” and later, almost whisper, “They thought the news might distract me from the paintings I was doing. Because of that, I never got the chance to hold her hand or tell her I love her.” These lines land heavy, reminders that behind the jokes lies a wound that never healed.

Wiebke Green’s direction embraces this velocity, keeping the stage almost empty so every flick of voice or body carries weight. Davison spins through characters at speed, yet clarity never falters. His Sasha is volatile, paranoid, sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening.

“There’s never a maniac with a machine gun when you need one, is there?”

The line jolts the room, laughter and unease tangled together.

For all its venom, the play finds tenderness. In quieter moments, Chet’s presence grounds Sasha, as when he murmurs, “We’ll make space.” The line lands like a promise, and Sasha admits, “That’s why I love him.” After so much rage, it is startling to hear love cut through.

What makes The Poltergeist stick is not just the story of a failed prodigy, but the feeling of being trapped in a loop of memories you cannot quite trust. Are we watching the truth, or only Sasha’s bitterness replayed as theatre. Ridley never answers, and Davison thrives in that uncertainty, switching from comedy to despair so quickly it feels dangerous.

If there is a drawback, it is that the speed sometimes feels pushed rather than lived. At moments Davison seems to be driving the text forward with sheer force, rather than letting the character’s life flow through the pauses and silences. It is a remarkable feat of stamina, but not always one that leaves room for the audience to fully absorb the emotional weight.

The Poltergeist runs 80 minutes without interval and plays at Arcola Theatre’s Studio 2 until 11 October 2025. Tickets are £15–£29, with discounts if booked alongside Philip Ridley’s companion play Tarantula.

Pictures by Simon Annand

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