Inis Nua presents Philip Ridley's 'Radiant Vermin'

And then we're caught.

Inis Nua Theatre Company's Philadelphia premiere of Ridley's 2015 dark comedy, deftly directed by Claire Moyer, introduces Jill and husband Ollie (Adam Hammet), who want to escape their decrepit neighborhood. They share the story of an amazing offer from a mysterious housing agent, Miss Dee (Eleni Delopoulos), who wants to establish them in their Dream Home.

Dreams come true — at a price

Miss Dee — by the end, we can guess her full name — knows too much about the young couple, and they're understandably wary. When she offers them a free house plus moving and renovation costs, it's too tempting to resist. They accept her reasoning that one well-established family in an otherwise undesirable area will attract other residents: "All it needs," she explains, "is for one house to sparkle."

Jill and Ollie speak directly to the audience, even inviting us to vote on their decisions, all of which makes us complicit in their increasingly bizarre deal. Without Miss Dee to explain further — "If you need to contact me," she tells them, "I'll contact you" — they discover through trial and error the rules of their good fortune.

Krause and Hammet are delightfully dim and daffy as the well-meaning couple seduced by their Dream Home, despite the mounting costs and risks of what they call "humane home renovation." Delopoulos is hilarious as a typically gregarious real estate agent, towering over her cowed clients in high heels and circling them like she's herding sheep.

The fable-like quality of Ridley's script is enhanced by Moyer's production, which puts audience on two sides of Meghan Jones's set, a framed outline of the house in cheerful colors with a stairway to a second level platform, lit by Amanda Jensen. Elizabeth Atkinson's sound design punctuates the increasingly dark play with suburban sounds of birds and lawnmowers. Katherine Fritz's costumes help define a seemingly average couple while hinting at their oddities; Miss Dee's tight pink skirt likewise fools us into complacency about a character who is much more than funny.

Timely questions

Krause and Hammet play more characters as the nearly two hour play progresses, building to their new neighbors visiting for their son's first birthday party. The scene's long, repetitious build tests their endurance and, unfortunately, ours as well; the thrill of them switching suddenly between their increasingly frenetic gaggle of characters eventually plateaus and stalls, particularly since the ending has less to do with what happens there as with new circumstances revealed by Miss Dee's return.

Despite this well-acted but exhausting scene, Radiant Vermin is an ambitiously eerie dark comedy, perfect for both the Halloween season and our upcoming election. Ridley asks serious questions about how much we rationalize our society's wealth relative to the rest of the world's poverty, and how much we're willing to warp our ethics to satisfy our greed. Radiant Vermin isn't subtle — the new shopping center going up nearby is called Never Enough — but the humor provided by its shocking surprises doesn't obscure the play's serious themes.