[3][4] Although initially met with negative critical reviews for its script,[5] the production was enthusiastically received by predominantly young audiences, making it something of a controversial hit.

[6][7] Over time, the play has come to be regarded as a seminal work in the confrontational 1990s style and sensibility of British drama termed in-yer-face theatre.

[8][9][10] The play is the first entry in Ridley's unofficially titled "East End Gothic Trilogy", followed by The Fastest Clock in the Universe and Ghost from a Perfect Place.

Almost immediately after Presley finishes his story, Cosmo's partner arrives—a huge, masked, apparently mute figure named Pitchfork Cavalier.

As soon as they leave, Cosmo performs a sexual assault on Haley by inserting one of his fingers soaked in medicine into her mouth.

Presley unexpectedly returns and, realising Cosmo's true motives, breaks the finger with which he had assaulted Haley.

This description seems to echo Cosmo, who enters the play wearing a long black overcoat which he takes off to reveal a red-sequinned jacket.

A few years ago it was about the fear of sex, intimacy, of being touched... [my plays are] like tuning forks, they vibrate with whatever’s going on in the atmosphere at the time.

Some of Ridley's friends, who were leaving art school to pursue acting, suggested that his monologues would make a good basis for a stage play.

"[16] In his semiautobiographical prose Introduction to his first collection of plays, Ridley describes how, when he was 18 years old, he saw a man in a pub wearing a red sequined jacket eat a variety of insects onstage for entertainment.

Lloyd says that he felt there were "all sorts of problems with [the initial draft of] The Pitchfork Disney" so he gave dramaturgical feedback to Ridley.

"[7] Lloyd directed The Pitchfork Disney himself by taking an unpaid sabbatical from his literary manager position and re-mortgaging his home, saying that "I felt like I was sticking my neck out.

Critic Maureen Paton described it as "ludicrously bad" and a "repugnant tiresome story… Mr. Ridley’s Grimm obsessions are in the worst possible taste", concluding that "This pointless wallow makes Marat-Sade seem like Pontins Holiday Camp.

"[19] Melanie McDonagh for The Evening Standard wrote, "Philip Ridley is simply the Fat Boy from the Pickwick Papers who sneaks up on old ladies and hisses 'I want to make your flesh creep'.

City Limits critic Lyn Gardner wrote that the script was "derivative of some (more famous) playwrights' worst plays".

[22] Comparing the play's enigmatic quality to the work of Pinter, Maureen Paton wrote, "Where Pinter's ironic technique, like a two-way mirror, can give an intellectual patina to a mystery wrapped in an enigma, Ridley seems luridly self-indulgent… [He] drops various ominous hints that are never resolved, leaving the audience to wallow in the mire of pointless speculation.

Lyn Gardner wrote that it had "no discernible internal logic, spewing imagery meaninglessly from nowhere… with long meandering monologues which… go nowhere and appear to have no dramatic impetus… [It has an] air of contrived weirdness when what is desperately needed is a sense of reality and some concrete explanations.

"[22] Benedict Nightingale for The Times wrote that “the play's obscurities becom[e] irksome” but that "There is no obligation on a dramatist to explain his characters' behaviour.

"[25] Reacting to the reviews, Ian Herbert in Theatre Record wrote that there was "a most encouraging set of disagreements" amongst critics regarding The Pitchfork Disney.

He defended the play, called it "a very important debut", compared Ridley's writing favourably to Harold Pinter's, and said that Ridley was a writer to watch out for: "He has a little to learn yet about dramatic structure and all the boring rules, but he can already create astonishingly original characters and give them lines that hold an audience spellbound.

It was so successful that, for the first time in its history, the Bush Theatre had to schedule an extra matinee performance to meet audience demand.

[27] Matthew Lloyd who directed the first production of The Pitchfork Disney has cited the play as marking a turning point in his career as a director.

[29] In his analysis of The Pitchfork Disney, Rebellato has stated that "The play was startling on its first appearance for its immense theatrical confidence and its lack of an explicitly moral authorial voice, two qualities that seemed, when it opened on 2 January 1991, contradictory.

"[30] Critic and leading expert on In-yer-face theatre, Aleks Sierz, has cited the play as a pioneering work.

Sierz credits the play with introducing "a totally new sensibility into British theatre [that] signalled a fresh direction for contemporary playwrighting: one that eschewed realistic naturalism, political ideology and social commentary, and turned auditorium's into cauldron's of sensation", adding that the play was "an agenda setting work: the era of experiential theatre began here".

[6] Despite the play being credited for instigating in-yer-face theatre, Ridley has spoken about how he feels that The Pitchfork Disney (along with his other plays in the so-called "East End Gothic Trilogy") were produced before in-yer-face theatre happened: "I had done my first three plays… by 1994 and that’s the year that most people say the ‘in your face’ thing started.