Lovers of Americana and violent movie plots will associate 1994 with Quentin Tarantino’s epoch-defining movie Pulp Fiction, but that was also the year when Laurence Fishburne’s Riff Raff was first produced.  Fishburne, who is a successful actor, writer and producer best known for his role as Morpheus in the Matrix trilogy, also starred in the original production of this play, which is entirely set in a single room, a decrepit hide-out. The connection with Pulp Fiction is not merely a timing coincidence: Riff Raff‘s protagonists are two men, Mike ‘20 20’ Leon and Billy ‘Torch’ Murphy, whose plan to steal four kilos of heroin from the young dealers of the most dangerous criminal in town has ended up in an unplanned murder, a disappeared get-away man, and a severely bleeding hand, which Torch carries in the pocket of his jeans and which drips all the way down to his Converse shoes. Desperate for help, Mike calls his old friend Tony ‘The Tiger’ Lee, who appears dedicated to lending a hand.

So far, so much for having been there, done that. On paper, there is nothing in this plot that hasn’t been flagged repeatedly since the Tarantino craze began, and eventually made to look obsolete by The Wire. In fact, when Mike and Torch erupt onto the stage, finding their way with a lighter, and during their initial minutes of dialogue, the analogy with Pulp Fiction seems inevitable, even excessive, brought on by having one white and one black character, with a briefcase full of heroin, discussing a quirkily pop anecdote on Mike’s hatred for rats. But with Tony’s arrival, the atmosphere shifts, and the play starts gathering pace, sweat and momentum, fanning out in stories and revelations as the three men try to come up with a plan, sustained by a faster and faster heartbeat.

There is at least one major detail that each one of these men doesn’t know about the other two. The gaps are dark, and make them feel dangerously unpredictable to both each other and the audience. Bill Buckhurst’s direction makes a point of this by constantly twirling his actors so that they are, again and again and again, pushed up against us, turning their shoulders to the audience, bullied off the slightly raised, floating floor that is the stage in the small and oppressive space of the Studio 2, made even smaller by Simon Kenny’s suspended grid ceiling.

But what really brings the text home as a stab to the heart is the cast. Fishburne gives each character his chance to shine during a few glorious minutes of confrontation, and each actor in this production takes that chance by the neck. Karl Collins is a lanky, tense, naive Mikey, with a love for his own voice and a taste for storytelling. Ariyon Bakare as Tony is strong and straight-backed, wide-shouldered, a rock of friendship and low-toned authoritative voice; in the middle of the play he gives an outstanding performance just sitting on a wooden crate, reciting one of what Mikey calls his ‘jailhouse poems’, acting out the long, rhyming story of a pimp and his whore with words as a mounting tide. And yet, maybe the most touching and electric moments come from Eugene O’Hare’s Torch, who starts with a slight, perhaps nervous Irish accent, but warms up as his character climaxes into a shaking, feverishly drenched withdrawal, and is then transcended after shooting some heroin into someone who even looks physically different, a double born out of him with an ecstatic, animalistic howl.

This is a solidly American, solidly text-based play, with the usual touch of misogyny and the bloody, sweaty, spitting goodfella writing. While in 1994 it might have stood on its own two feet as part of a certain cultural renaissance and as a reflection of a transformation in the methods and interests of drug-dealing crime, over fifteen years later it needs to redeem its dusty and over-exposed topic through excellence, and by wrenching its personal themes a bit harder. This Arcola production does just that, and exemplifies the enlivening, resuscitating theatrical power of physical presence.

Till 24 April 2010