Review: Shopping & Fucking

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The most famous English play of the 1990s

Mark Ravenhill Shopping and Fucking is the most famous English play of the 1990s. Even many of those who have not seen the play recognize the play’s striking title.
Shopping and Fucking premiered in 1996 in London on the 63-seat Upstairs stage at the Royal Court. The play was directed by Max Stafford-Clark, who is known for the premieres of many of Carl Churchill’s plays.

The play was not expected to be a particular success, which was the controversy that followed the premiere and the audience’s interest. The transfer of the play, which depicts the violent drug world and includes bold sex, to the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End, which is ten times larger, was considered a historic event. Since then, more than thirty interpretations of the play have been performed around the world.
Shopping and Fucking made its author, the then 28-year-old Mark Ravenhill, the most famous playwright of his generation. The play, in turn, became the flagship of a new outspoken and pessimistic English play.
Last autumn, Time magazine compared Ravenhill to two other English playwrights, Patrick Marber and Martin McDonagh. All three were offended by the comparison.

Ravenhill’s closest kindred spirit can be considered Sarah Kane, who committed suicide a year ago. Ravenhill himself has said that he was influenced by Bret Easton Ellis and Dennis Cooper. Ravenhill, who has a university background, has said that he has no personal experience of the drug world in his play.
Since Shopping and Fucking, Mark Ravenhill has written three plays. Faust is Dead follows the French philosopher’s adventure in the United States with a young gay man. The Handbag gets its name from Oscar Wilde’s play The Most Important Thing to Be Genuine, from which it is partly based. The play deals with the parenting of gays and lesbians.
Last autumn, Ravenhill’s latest play, Some Explicit Polaroids, premiered in London. The play depicts the life of a man who experienced the political 1980s and lived in prison for years in the money-hungry and consumer-oriented 1990s.