Show and Tell Post: Shopping and Fucking

Shopping and Fucking was Mark Ravenhill’s first full length play written in 1995.  It’s first reading was at Finborough Theatre in London 1995.  It premiered in 1996 at the Royal Court Upstairs in London’s West End.  After its premier the production went on a national and international tour produced by Out of Joint and Royal Court. When it premiered, the play got mixed reviews.  Some were shocked by the sexual violence.  Other critics were drawn to the black humor of the play.  This play, along with Sarah Kane’s Blasted is considered the poster children for In-Yer-Face Theatre.  This play is available on Amazon.

The story focuses on Mark, a recovering drug addict who is struggling with trying to find out if feelings exist that aren’t drug induced.  He is also struggling with being emotionally dependent with his lovers, Robbie and Lulu.  Robbie and Lulu are in the middle of a drug deal gone wrong.  They have agreed to sell ecstasy but Robbie has broken the only rule of selling drugs.  Do not do the drugs you are selling.  Then later he gives the drugs away at a rave and now the supplier is after them both.  To try and curb his dependence on his emotions, Mark has sought out a sexual transaction.  He meets Gary, an underage prostitute who has been sexually abused by his step-father causing him to be aroused by violent acts of sex. 

This play is an example of what is known as In-Yer-Face Theatre.  This form of theatre is described as work by playwrights who presents shocking, inappropriate, or vulgar material on stage to ingage and provoke a response from the audience to get their attention and point it towards a certain subject.  So the choice to include such vulgar acts of sexual violence in this script is strictly to get a response out of the audience.  Ravenhill wants the audience to feel uncomfortable because the subject matter is uncomfortable and wants the audience to notice the problem with seeing sex as a transaction rather than an intimate  moment between two people.  Another choice that the playwright has made was the decision to not stage the knife scene in the script.  This scene would be arguable the most vulgar, disgusting example of sexual violence in the play had it been included.  If Ravenhill really wanted to shock and awe the audience, that would be the way to do it.  But that is not Ravenhill's only intention.  If he included the knife, it would have drawn the focus away from the main point of the play and it wouldn't be about sex as a transaction rather than a play where a teenaged boy gets sexually assaulted by a knife.