Nechutné, šokujúce, desivé, trpké, obscénne, veľa wtf momentov, zvláštne, príťažlivé, vtipné, silné... Intimacy at a price … Sam Spruell (Mark) and Sophie Wu (Lulu). Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian Mother Clap's Molly House, set in 18th-century London, was first performed in 2001 at the National's Lyttleton Theatre with music by Matthew Scott. His radio play Feed Me was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 2000. Totally Over You (2004), is a play which explores the world of instant celebrity. In 2006, four further plays were published: The Cut and Product; and Citizenship and pool (no water).

In Ravenhill’s view, in a modern retail economy characterised by dispersal, there is no more factory floor where workers can find common cause. Instead, we find in his plays a concern for ‘micro-politics’, the finite local struggles championed by the French thinker Michel Foucault, who appears thinly disguised as Alain in Faust is Dead, waxing philosophical in the desert outside Los Angeles. In Handbag, meanwhile, the plot centres on the politics of fertility and care, as two couples, one gay, and the other lesbian, attempt to conceive and then care for a child. The baby, through the neglect of child-minders, dies. The play therefore acts out a common anxiety fantasy of affluent parents while pointing out the exploitation of inexperienced carers who bear the burden of nurturing the offspring of the wealthy. Handbag interweaves this modern tale with an imaginative prehistory of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, taking the perspective of the exploited Miss Prism, who was also a failed child-minder in her time. Nice to MITEM you: the 10th edition of the Madách International Theatre Meeting Opens in the Hungarian Capital 27th September 2023 On the other hand, The New York Times favors the ‘it doesn’t exist’ formula. It has prudishly renamed the play Shopping and …. Everyone does it, no one will name it! The Times doesn’t even give it an asterisk or two. Three little dots must suffice. “How was it for you, my darling?”“That was the greatest three little dots I ever had in my life!” It tells the story of Gary (Antony Ryding), a 14 year-old rent boy who ran away from home after being repeatedly raped by his step father. However it seems this experience with his step father has effected him so bad that he finds he needs hard sex and to be dominated to get pleasure. He befriends a punter called Mark ( James Kennedy). I first heard of Mark Ravenhill through his Guardian columns. I knew him more as a cultural figure before I read his plays. Watching the Lyric’s revival, I had similar feelings to going to see their production of Edward Bond’s Saved, another controversial play that comes with its own myths attached.Groundbreaking Autistic-Led Production of “A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” at A Common Thread Theatre Company in Framingham, MA 21st October 2023 Plot-wise, nothing in Shopping and F**king that takes us to a new place: The addictive Mark falls in love with Gary, who doesn’t want to be loved, and this pisses off Robbie, who’s in love with Mark and is so anxious to be loved in turn that he gets Lulu in trouble with Brian…and so on.. We’ve been here plenty of times and, for fleeting moments, it does get old. But Ravenhill’s stylish junkies, prostitutes, and hipsters trying too hard to make their own rules tell a somewhat different story. They speak with a raw, painful honesty. Their emotions are like open sores. A: Mark Ravenhill Pf: 1996, London Pb: 1996 G: Drama in 14 scenes S: A flat, interview room, bedsit, pub, hospital, and department store, London, 1990s C: 4m, 1f His next play, Faust Is Dead, was produced by the Actor's Touring Company and toured nationally in 1997. It was followed by Handbag in 1998, which won an Evening Standard award, and Some Explicit Polaroids, which opened at the Ambassadors Theatre, London, in November 1999. In 1998, while literary director of Paines Plough, a company started in 1974 to develop new writing, he organised 'Sleeping Around', a collaborative writing project.

It made me think a lot about the difference between want and need. We’re living in a selfish age and we’re all falling victim to the belief that “I’ll be happy when ...”. I’ll be happy when I get those trainers and that boyfriend and that amount of money in my bank account and that postcode and that number of likes on Facebook. We’re chasing the want but not fully knowing what we need. And that can so easily get ugly because of all the things you might do in the pursuit of happiness. S odstupom času som ju však nevedela dostať z hlavy a vtedy mi došlo, že som asi zošalela, lebo v živote potrebujem viac jeho tvorby. I mean, are there any feelings left, you know?” asks Mark forlornly. There aren’t, really. There are needs . And the cause of all this sullen alienation? Money! Mr. Ravenhill’s message about the corrupting power of the god of consumerism amounts to the unsurprising pronouncement that money is the root of all evil. Unlike Irvine Welsh of Trainspotting , Mr. Ravenhill is a moralist. He disapproves of consumer society, warning us repeatedly in virtually every scene that everything is the art of the deal, like sex and shopping. It was also interesting to see the different audience reaction in a bigger theatre. When it first opened, it wasn’t as funny as when I wrote it. I think people were coming to the Royal Court with their “serious concern for social issues” head on. But as soon as we got into the West End, that changed. ­People said, “What do you feel about them laughing there and there?” and I said, “Oh no, but that’s all the places that I laughed.”Ravenhill’s play is both distinctly of its time, in the way it skewered the bleakness of Thatcher’s legacy on a generation of youngsters, and yet also prophetic. It neatly reflects the anxieties and monetary obsessions of youngsters living in a post-financial crash world where you are what you own; where even intimacy comes at a terrible price or must be avoided at all costs; and where loneliness is corrosive. “Are there any feelings left?” muses Mark on his odyssey in which he tries to reduce everything to a transaction only to discover that love gets in the way. But, right at the end, there’s a moment: Robbie has a look on his face. I’m not sure if it was the actor or the character I connected with, but suddenly I got hit by all of this empathy and compassion, feelings I hadn’t had the whole way through. I felt sad, and a little hopeful. Maybe because it turns out that I’m more sensitive than I thought, and maybe I cared about Robbie all along and maybe that means we all care a little more than we think we do. Ableson is terrific as the self-involved Mark, setting a high standard as he reprises his role from San Francisco. Fortunately, under Edwards’ direction the rest of the cast has no problem meeting his level. Malkasian is a devastating Robbie, pathetic at one moment and pathological the next. Parris is just super as Lulu, the character with at least one quirky foot touching the ground. Steven Klein is an appealing Gary, and Reed’s Brian is both funny and frightening in his analysis of civilization and Disney feature films. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-04-12 12:00:46 Associated-names Rebellato, Dan, 1968- Boxid IA40086504 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier