Abstract Among the fears rife in contemporary “Insecure Britain”, This was a header used by the Guardian for a series of articles in 2014, which described a growing sense of social precarity and disillusionment with mainstream politics in Britain: https://www.theguardian.com/society/series/insecure-britain the anxieties connected with the housing crisis – rise of property costs, cutbacks on welfare housing, increasing precarity of living conditions – may be among the most tangible in everyday life. It is not surprising, then, that the disruptive power of threats to home as a source of security and comfort has been at the centre of a series of recent British plays. While many of these are marked by documentary realism, incorporating real-life testimonies in order to evoke empathy with those hit hardest by the crisis, there is also a notable subset that veer to the other side of the sur/realist spectrum, reflecting on the crisis in highly stylized dystopian scenarios. In this article, I propose the concept of ‘playhouse Gothic’ to describe Mike Bartlett’s Game and Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin (both 2015). Both are explorations of the affective and social implications of the housing crisis that fall into the latter category. The case studies examine how in both plays the interplay between dramatic and theatrical space foregrounds the extent to which our homes themselves are sources of insecurity. More specifically, the plays employ the mode of the Gothic in order to involve their audiences in an emotionally loaded spatial experience, thereby also inviting them to reflect on their own socio-economic anxieties and implication in perpetuating structures of inequality. The analyses take into account the dramatic texts and the set-up of concrete performances as well as reviews documenting viewers’ responses to the plays.

中文翻译：

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(Play)Houses of Horror：解决住房危机的焦虑

摘要 在当代“不安全的英国”中普遍存在的恐惧中，这是卫报在 2014 年一系列文章中使用的标题，描述了英国日益增长的社会不稳定感和对主流政治的幻灭感：https://www. theguardian.com/society/series/insecure-britain 与住房危机相关的焦虑——房产成本上升、福利住房削减、生活条件日益不稳定——可能是日常生活中最有形的焦虑之一。因此，作为安全和舒适来源的威胁的破坏性力量一直是英国最近一系列戏剧的中心，这并不奇怪。虽然其中许多都以纪录片现实主义为标志，结合现实生活中的证词，以唤起对受危机打击最严重的人的同情，还有一个值得注意的子集转向超现实主义光谱的另一边，反映了高度程式化的反乌托邦场景中的危机。在这篇文章中，我提出了“剧场哥特式”的概念来描述迈克巴特利特的游戏和菲利普雷德利的辐射害虫（均为 2015 年）。两者都是对属于后一类的住房危机的情感和社会影响的探索。案例研究探讨了戏剧空间和戏剧空间之间的相互作用如何在这两种戏剧中突出我们的房屋本身是不安全源的程度。更具体地说，这些戏剧采用了哥特式的模式，以便让观众参与到充满情感的空间体验中，从而也邀请他们反思自己的社会经济焦虑和对长期存在的不平等结构的影响。分析考虑了戏剧文本和具体表演的设置以及记录观众对戏剧反应的评论。