Shopping and F***ing
By Mark Ravenhill
Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 2 — Until December ??
Review by Brendan Doyle
The theatre was full, and the audience mainly gay and male for this London production by the Out Of Joint theatre company. Were they attracted by the graphic depictions of sometimes tender, sometimes violent gay sex on stage? It couldn't have been for the laughs, although young dramatist Mark Ravenhill does manage to find humour in a world that is every bit as black as Samuel Beckett's, a society that has lost its way, where, as the main exploiter in this play says, "Civilisation is money".
Shopping and F***ing (no, I'm not being coy, this is the real title) is not a pretty play. Advertised "for adults only", it was obviously considered too nasty even for the usually blasé Sydney Theatre Company subscribers, who this time have to be content with Noel Coward's Private Lives in the main theatre.
The set is simple and effective. A table, a couple of chairs, a carpeted floor and a few boxes covered in the same cheap carpet evoke a London bed-sit that is an interior decorator's nightmare. Behind this, a large plastic screen lit up occasionally by garish neon signs reading "Interview" or "Money" or "Shopping". Above it all hovers an ornately decorated beam, a reminder of a more refined sort of theatre than the one we have found ourselves in tonight.
Deafening techno music suddenly plunges us into the daily existence of 20-somethings Lulu, Robbie and Mark, whose life revolves around watching TV, microwave noodles, drugs, sex and occasionally trying to find paid employment.
Mark announces he is leaving the household to get treatment for his heroin addiction, leaving Lulu and Robbie to scrape up the rent between them. Lulu goes to a job interview where she is asked to take off her clothes to show "how well she can act" before she is considered for a "sales position", which turns out to be selling ecstasy in clubs for ruthless businessman and drug dealer Brian.
Mark, meanwhile, looking for gay sex without attachment, hires Gary, a kid working as a male prostitute, who had been regularly raped by his stepfather. After hearing Gary's story, Mark, whose feelings are not dead yet, cannot help but get involved with the boy, who ends up finding solace in Mark's arms.
No punches are pulled in Ravenhill's portrayal of gay sex, which is presented as being just as violent and exploitative, in a society where money defines all values, as any other human interaction. As Ravenhill says, "The shopping and the fucking bleed into each other. Defining yourself as a commodity, not being able to have sex without bringing in the values of consumerism."
There is no overt political dimension to this play. Is it Britain in the late '90s or under Thatcher? It doesn't seem to matter to this generation that have grown up under economic rationalism. Their world is circumscribed by the values and lifestyle sold to them on TV, by ruthlessly exploiting employers, and an uncaring system where young people sell themselves body and soul. This is what happens to the powerless in Britain under rampant neo-capitalism.
Despite all this, Ravenhill manages to make us laugh. Robbie, sent to a club to sell ecstasy, takes a few tabs himself and ends up giving the whole lot away. Then he and Lulu, to make up the loss, do phone sex from home, which results in some screamingly funny dialogue.
There is also a glimmer of hope in the way Lulu, Robbie and Mark share a life of poverty together and genuinely care about each other. But they cannot see any way to escape the horrors of the world outside their door, which is controlled by the likes of businessman Brian.
Not for the faint-hearted.