Georgie Henley delivers phenomenal work in Philip Ridley’s Tarantula at the Arcola Theatre
“I feel like there’s a real connection between us”
A fun scheduling quirk means that you can currently see 2 Queens of Narnia on the London stage. Anna Popplewell is part of The Maids at the Jermyn Street Theatre, whilst Georgie Henley is starring in Philip Ridley’s East London-set monologue Tarantula, returning to the role that she first played in the streaming times of lockdown, its live debut taking place in the intimacy of the Arcola’s Studio 2.
Teenager Toni is getting ready for her first date and is very excited to tell us about it. Her middle child energy and dreams of Oxford University are being parked for the night as she fills us in on her meet-cute with Michael at a school volunteering event with relentless oversharing exuberance. But she’s slightly too loud, prone to a too-long silence breaking her flow, as anyone who has seen a Ridley play can tell you, there’s trouble ahead.

When that comes, it is an absolute rupture in Wiebke Green’s perfectly calibrated production, a shocking slash of violence that turns everything inside out. What we thought was strange is now revealed as PTSD, the young woman Toni thought she was shattered by her experience and in the act of putting herself back together, really isn’t the same any more. It’s a brutal but believable narrative about how recovery takes different shapes, its hyper-locality only intensifying its effect – you’ll certainly think twice about making eye contact with strangers ever again.
It is given distressing life by a scorchingly intense performance from Henley that feels like it is setting the bar way high for every other actor to follow the rest of this year. The moments of paralysing fear and violent shuddering that prefigure her panic attacks will haunt your dreams, the shifts of Ciaran Cunningham’s stark lighting design trapping us right there with her. It’s the nature of acting to be sure, but the contrast with her work in The Diplomat couldn’t any more dramatic, it really is phenomenally done.
There’s a touch less of the fantastical flourish to Ridley’s use of language here and suitably so, but there’s no lack of the vivid turn of phrase that is so recognisable. And structurally, there’s something nightmarish about the echoes that appear, the fear that true escape might never really be possible and history is doomed to repeat itself. Perhaps aware of that dread, Henley’s Toni ups the energy once again in desperate denial as Tarantula stops, rather than finishes, the damage all too real. Blisteringly good.