Tender Napalm

I could squeeze a bullet between those lips. Point first. Press it between those rosebud lips. Prise it between your pearly whites. Gently. I wouldn't break a single tooth.

Philip Ridley's first new play since 2008 marks a change of direction for the acclaimed, ever restless and maverick writer. Tender Napalm is a high-impact, high-concept two handed play which explores the landscape that is a relationship between a man and a woman. Explosive, poetic, brutal and ultimately redemptive, the play weaves a compelling theatrical tapestry to re-examine and re-define the language of love.

This abstract play is cool, slick and savagely romantic. There are no defined settings, narratives or characters. Instead, Tender Napalm is 70 minutes of real time drama: simply a man and woman dissecting their relationship through a mixture of memory, fantasy, and a mixture of the two. And, by doing this, they touch upon zeitgeist concerns of violence, war and faith. Tender Napalm is a showcase of the imaginative, fantastical and magical poeticisms Ridley can achieve from the bleak and brutal themes of war and destruction.

This volume also contains five poems from the performance sequence Lovesongs for Extinct Creatures, publishing for the first time extracts from Philip Ridley's cycle of love poetry.