This article contains spoiler material.
“I’m supposed to be here.”
The Exterminator, written by Kara Hardie and directed by Hardie and Evie Corney presents a vicious tug-of-war over the home of Fay Marouf’s ‘The Tenant’. Her personal space and sanity are put in jeopardy after she gives her spare keys to the charismatic, disgustingly manipulative Exterminator, in the form of Sam Radford’s ‘The Squatter’.
Entering the space at Antwerp Mansion (a freezing, decaying Victorian building), the stage space feels comfortable and lived in – with Marouf, sleeping on a brown leather sofa – centre stage. Production designers Enid Kirk and Benedict Zephyr craft a space that feels so lived in, with David Bowie posters on the wall, a record player, a coffee table holding a houseplant and an array of personal objects scattered around the space.
Marouf’s Tenant immediately draws us in as she dances around to a record, making a cup of tea. It’s a fluent and natural performance that allows the audience to feel similarly at ease in her home. That is, until Radford enters… He is wonderfully charismatic as he strides through the aisle, kissing audience member hands, charming us – right before he knocks on the door.
Radford’s performance as The Squatter is delightfully farcical and over the top. He has no boundaries, constantly invading Tenant’s space, coughing in her face, eating his own snot, while looking for ‘mouse droppings’. He is an exterminator, after all. He laments that the mice are “in your home, causing you problems” in a not-so-subtle allegory – before finally manipulating The Tenant into giving over her spare keys so these mice don’t ruin her house.
It is after this moment that Hardie and Corney’s distinctive style emerges – a blend of choreographed anarchy and intimately emotional vignettes. As The Squatter lets out a maniacal cackle, brash, villainous music plays as he takes over the house – revealing his true slobbery and sociopathy as he trashes the place. He is a perfect foil to The Tenant, as she enters, with ripples of indignation and grief as she (very rightly) tells him to get out! As he continually refuses, encroaching on more and more of her physical space – we see her stature change. Marouf’s breadth of emotion sparks instant empathy, as we see her diminished, and even compared to a “little mouse”.
While the script is gorgeous and full of these wickedly clever metaphors, some of my favourite sequences are completely movement based. After a truly touching moment in which the characters share food, there is a sense of emotional whiplash as we are thrust into a true ‘Ben and Jerry’ style cat and mouse chase. Jaunty music plays, as the two fight, doing cartwheels over the couch, playing tug of war with the blanket, and engaging in an exaggerated bullfight. It was a genuinely thrilling moment that engaged with the heart-breaking power struggle without completely depleting the energy of all joy (which is a risk when depicting such relevant, harrowing themes).
It’s incredibly refreshing to see such joy and passion in an implicitly political piece. The music and sound design was stellar – giving just the right amount of weight and gravitas to each moment – heightening the already immersive atmosphere.
I also adored a shadow puppet-esque movement sequence in which Radford became a silhouetted puppet master, backlit onto a curtain behind Marouf – who was asleep. This malevolent puppeteering, was a huge contrast in pace and tone, with Marouf’s writhing figure and agonising expression simultaneously dehumanising The Tenant, whilst also rendering her achingly human. The two performers are electric and entrancing, with a tense, antagonistic chemistry that drives the piece.
Hardie brilliantly displaces stories of modern occupations into a recognisable, domestic setting. With this being most evident in The Squatter’s monologues to the audience, where we are complicit in helping him hang a washing-line as a border across the stage, and helplessly watching him replace a tree gifted to The Tenant by her mother with a new plant.
While there is some political engagement with land struggle in a segment in which the characters watch news reports containing testimonies from people who are currently suffering under occupation in Gaza, the themes of personal space and home are powerfully communicated in an intensely personal and heartfelt monologue by Marouf. Her longing for family and familiarity, echoes the testaments of these displaced people. She talks of nostalgia or – “algos” (suffering caused by unappeased yearning to return) for what has been taken from her, lamenting “I want to go home, I want to go back to once was.”. The nuance of this grief is a testament to the incredible subtlety and relatability of Marouf’s performance, and genius of Hardie’s writing.
There’s this perfect tension between the domestic setting of The Tenant’s home and Radford’s almost farcical villain encroaching, invading and destroying. In the end, Radford has us in the palm of his hand – just to chew us up and spit us out. His physicality and invasion of space was hilarious, but it felt disturbing to laugh after we had seen Marouf so cruelly driven out. I also want to highlight how The Squatter and Tenant frequently address and interact with the audience. Hardie and Corney make the audience sit in our discomfort, we can’t help but laugh, and we can’t take our eyes from the sadistic Squatter onstage, as he ravages and revels in his triumph.
Overall, The Exterminator is a pitch perfect, distinctly brilliant feat of theatre that embraces a complex balance of anarchic hilarity and breath-taking poignance. It is a truly hilarious and brutal hour of theatre that I would recommend to anyone who wants to laugh, cry and wince while reconsidering how we look at power, personal space and ownership.
The Exterminator is running at 7pm at Antwerp Mansion in Rusholme on Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th of November.
