Philip Ridley's VINCENT RIVER

GROUND UP & RISING
proudly presents
Philip Ridley's VINCENT RIVER

Directed by Collin Carmouze.
Starring Beverly Beckman Blanchette & Bobby Johnston

Venue: ARTISTIC VIBES
Dates: August 22, 23, 29, 30* & September 4
Times: Friday & Saturday - 8:00 pm
Sundays - 2:00 pm & 6:00 pm

*2:00pm FREE performance for the deaf & hard of hearing community featuring ASL interpreters

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Admission:
$20 General
$15 Seniors, AEA & SAG-AFTRA Union Members
Free - Under the age of 25 (with government-issued ID.)

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Davey has seen something he can't forget. Anita has been forced to flee her home. These two have never met. Tonight their paths cross, with devastating consequences. Thrilling, heartbreaking and darkly humorous by turns, VINCENT RIVER is an upfront look at self-deception's power to destroy. After her son, Vincent, is murdered in a homophobic attack, Anita must come to terms with her loss, and the hidden fact of his sexuality, an aspect of his identity that she had refused to countenance while he was alive. This grief and acceptance is complicated by the arrival of Davey, a battered and bruised seventeen-year-old boy, who confesses to Anita that he cannot escape Vincent's ghost. Anita believes that Davey has come to admit to the murder, but it is a deeper crime, a crime of omission, that is haunting her son's lover.

“What gives VINCENT RIVER its particular and considerable power is how it uses a classic, creaky structure to cast big, disturbing shadows that wind up following you home…The chances of the image of the dead Vincent River ever getting up and walking out of Davey's head are very slim. That's just as true for us as it is for him."
— NY Times

"Ridley's play, with an appallingly sadistic killing at its heart, has a stark simplicity that belies the intricacy of its language and imagery…[The play] conveys powerfully the way in which fiercely held fictions within families, while they remain unchallenged, prop up the familial construct at the cost of dangerously defining and restricting the individuals within it and their relationships…Ridley scatters poetic fragments throughout, like a trail of bread-crumbs leading to the supposed safety of home."
— Times (London).

RUNNING TIME: 1hr 30mins