Ziye Hu and Katherine Cappellacci in Radiant Vermin | Photo by DizquePhotography
I’m not familiar with playwright Philip Ridley. Riot King’s production of Radiant Vermin is my introduction. And y’all, it slaps—hard. Hilarious, unhinged yet razor-sharp, this exuberant and finely calibrated bit of theatrical mischief is a fun-house mirror take on the housing crisis and the ethical strain of being complicit in a system that requires many expendable humans to benefit a few elites.
Ollie (Ziye Hu) and Jill (Katherine Cappellacci), as fledgling homeowners, are very excited to tell us their story. They finish each other’s sentences. It’s as if they don’t want to think too hard about what they are saying and certainly don’t want us to. There’s a third on the way, their unborn son Benjy. They keep telling us, and themselves, that this is all, ultimately, for his well-being and future. Feeling trapped by circumstances in a bad neighbourhood, they are thrust into a realm of dream home ownership by what I’d call a Magical Fairy God-Agent, Miss Dee (Lisa Horner).
Ollie and Jill have been chosen by the government to spearhead some neighbourhood revitalization by accepting a free home, a significant fixer-upper. There’s no wiring or hot water, it’s essentially a shell they are responsible to refurbish at their own expense. After some backing and filling, they sign the dubious contract (deal with the devil?) and discover, rather quickly, that the cost of their renovations is a moral one.
Hu and Cappellacci are an exhilarating duo. Their aggressively wholesome vibes are endearing, though their wild-eyed intensity betrays the dark desperation lurking beneath this performance of earnest, domestic bliss. As Miss Dee, Horner personifies, with urgency, a practiced charm thinly veiling nefarious intentions. She is so charismatic that, despite the red flags, you want to fall under her spell. Later in the story, she also portrays a heartbreakingly pragmatic homeless woman who stumbles willingly into Ollie and Jill’s predatory orbit. With aching vulnerability and deceptive ease, she almost single-handedly carries the weight of a jarring tonal shift, when shit gets real, and we are suddenly forced to confront the sad underbelly of this situation.
Ziye Hu and Katherine Cappellacci in Radiant Vermin | Photos by DizquePhotography
And what, exactly, is this situation? Late one evening, Ollie and Jill notice the fires of a homeless encampment nearby and, once they are are in bed, hear some ominous rustling in their dismally unfinished kitchen. The subsequent encounter with an intruder leads to a dead body and a sparkling new kitchen of their dreams. They need more than a kitchen, of course, so they capitalize on this mystical situation—murder, dazzling light show, fabulously decorated new room—while nosey neighbours, their own skewed moral compasses, and a series of rules and negotiations lead to a precarious climb up the property ladder. And all of it conveyed with crisp intentionality.
Sebastian Biasucci’s direction is tight and whimsical, with small-scale yet evocative spectacle tailored perfectly to the cozy limitations of the Red Sandcastle Theatre. Amelia Mielke-O’Grady’s set offers a wooden house frame, with shuttered windows, doorways and stretched plastic sheeting that provide the skeletal trappings of renovation. The actors dash through this liminal space as Natasha Rotondaro’s lighting immerses them in eerie flashes, glows and ambient, colourful textures. The air feels electric with a sense of wondrous, sinister conjuring.
Biasucci makes clever use of the space, structure and props. There is quirky theatrical charm to scenes of them in bed together, an upper level set of shutters opening to reveal Ollie and Zu as if we are looking down on them from above. The miniature car really tickled me. Zach Parsons’ sound design augments Hu and Cappellacci’s emphatic, buoyant energy with the generic, upbeat musical stylings that characterize home improvement shows. As Ollie and Jill’s scheming grows increasingly grotesque, horrific zaps and drones work in tandem with the light to prompt our eager imaginations.
The calamitous “garden birthday party,” teased early on, turns out to be an especially astonishing bit of fast-paced, impressionistic performance art from Hu and Cappellacci as they scamper and swirl about, portraying a dizzying assortment of secondary characters gradually driving our central pair quite mad. This sequence alone deserves applause.
There are a couple theatrical inside jokes that amused me, but it’s the scrappy, outrageous, firmly controlled mise en scène that sell this play’s purposeful self-awareness. The interactive moments are equally well-integrated and executed, as Ollie and Jill test our capacity for empathy or judgment.
The final moment, were we realized that Ollie and Jill aren’t the only ones aware of us, lands with menacing clarity.
Radiant Vermin
November 12 to 22, 2026
Red Sandcastle Theatre
(922 Queen Street East)
90 minutes
Lisa Horner in Radiant Vermin | Photo by DizquePhotography