Philip Ridley’s Tender Napalm, being produced by Unifaun at St James Cavalier, is a remarkable play for two actors, named simply Man (Andre Agius) and Woman (Bettina Paris).

Over 90 minutes, they engage in a long series of loving, or violent, dialogues, or aria-like monologues, in which they lay bare their relationship.

Some are very long indeed. In these, they talk about past experiences as they remember them or misremember them. Or else, they talk excitedly about wildly fanciful experiences that reveal to the other, and to the audience, their inner being.

Ridley is putting before our eyes, sometimes amused but often pitying, a crisis in the relationship. The crisis revolves around who of the two is boss and psychological leader. It is a crisis related to the couple’s increasing failure to maintain the connection that has initially brought them together.

It is also a crisis brought about, apparently, by a terrorist bomb explosion that killed the couple’s child. The event has cruelly affected the couple's love-making; they can never have the courage to produce another child. The Man is forcing himself to be unable to have real sex with his woman.

Gripping text and the strength of this production makes it a play not to be missed

Perhaps the Man’s most extraordinary monologue is the one describing how he was kidnapped by aliens. These aliens he describes as being incapable of violent acts, but they also wish to destroy their enemy’s planet.

Man recounts how they use the Man’s DNA to clone a generation of aggressive creatures. They also get the Man to steer a spaceship towards the enemy planet and bomb it out of existence, something he does with an amazingly great delight.

In the important final scene where, interestingly, we see the Man and the Woman having their first meeting, we learn the origin of the fanciful environment that colours all the preceding scenes, such as the white unicorn that symbolises the romantic element in the couple’s love.

The Man makes clear to the Woman his desire to bring about peace and justice in the world, with violence if necessary.

Not that the Woman is even slightly restrained. Toni Attard’s impressively dynamic direction makes Paris’s Woman someone whose physicality almost matches that of Agius. It enables her to engage with him in strength and energy.

Their duels, one in particular, have an agility that is elegant, and sometimes just a little alarming when it is being conducted just a metre or two away from the spectator.

I was just as impressed by the high quality of the diction, especially when lines were being delivered at high speed. One gripping scene spring to mind, with a long series of words or short phrases fired away by one actor. They are followed, without break, by the other actor firing away similar words and short phrases. The sequence reminded me of passages of stichomythia in Greek tragedy.

It is quite some time since I encountered two young actors who dealt with difficult vocal and physical material with such skill. The director certainly deserves high praise.

Agius and Paris may also deserve even higher praise, and not just for the technical aspects of the performance but also for the changing emotions that constantly coloured their voices, their faces, their bodies.

The play has a strongly erotic charge, but Attard makes sure this is mainly confined to the dialogue. The physical aspects are not neglected, but never over-done. The relationship between the two is sado-masochistic, the strongest expression of which being in the scene where the Man says he is forcing a grenade into the Woman’s body, and after teasing warnings, sets it off. In a later scene, the Woman does the same to the Man.

Clearly, this is not a play for children or young adolescents, but most older people will probably not cringe. With its descriptions of deadly duels between the Man and a huge sea-monster – or of the Woman’s description of a tropical beach, where she imagines being stranded with the Man, and of the tsunami that later wrecks the beach – the author opens to our mind’s eye the many scenes of epic wars and natural disasters provided us in hundreds of films. Ridley is reminding the audience that his two characters have been formed by show business, just as much as the rest of us.

Attard has gone a little beyond the author’s directions for the stage. Designer Romualdo Moretti has made the circular stage strongly suggestive of the sandy beach imagined by Woman.

High above the acting space, Moretti has placed a tangle of dry branches which bring to mind the imaginary island. The music is atmospheric but never intrusive, and Chris Gatt’s lighting, as always, is just right.

I am certainly not sure I share producer Adrian Buckle’s firm belief in the greatness of Ridley, but I must certainly accept that his gripping text and the strength of this production makes it a play not to be missed.

Tender Napalm shows today and tomorrow at St James Cavalier, Valletta.

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