SHOPPING MADE WELL, FUCKING FOR FRESHNESS OF APPEAL

The Spark O.C. blog has not one but two separate, individual, and totally unique blog posts on (first) the experience and (then) the content of Mark Ravenhill's SHOPPING & FUCKING, currently inspiring strong audience reactions over at the Monkey Wrench Collective theater.

Watching three well-heeled ladies depart the theater at intermission at Sunday's performance inspired the first blog post:

Observing three audience members linger during intermission and then decide to depart yesterday's performance of the Monkey Wrench Collective production of Marc[sic] Ravenhill's Shopping and F***ing made me speculate about their motivation.

Throughout my long career in the theatre, I've witnessed plenty of walkouts. There's a tendency to assume that people are leaving because they're offended, and a similar expectation that artists are smugly satisfied because of it.

While there may be some truth in those perceptions, the reality is, not surprisingly, a bit more complicated.

The second post is a more direct review of the production:

For his first full-length play, written in 1996, UK dramatist Marc[sic] Ravenhill hits the mark most of the time as he peers into the pathetic lives of penniless, aimless and addicted young people who have concluded that life consists of little more than dangerous transactions in which sex and drugs are equal opportunity employers. The glimmer of hope, at least in the case of one man and woman, is their fascination with hearing and telling stories--not that the stories themselves ever seem to end happily. But the play, Shopping and F***ing, also sports absurdly funny moments that occasionally balance out the pervasively grim lives of its characters.

...

Monkey Wrench Collective's production, staged by artistic director Dave Barton, takes the raw material of this play (and some of it is very raw indeed, though the nudity and heartless sexual encounters never appear gratuitous), and makes clear that Ravenhill's is truly "the well-made play" in its adherence to theatrical conventions.

(Full disclosure: Spark O.C. reviewer Rick Stein will be directing Michael Tremblay's DAMNEE MANON, SACREE SANDRA at Monkey Wrench next June.)

Tickets for SHOPPING & FUCKING remain damnedly purchasable via the internet for a scant $20 General Admission fee and an even cheaper $10 for students (or those dedicated enough to forge their own Student I.D.s). Absolutely no one under 17 allowed. Walk-outs discouraged, but tolerated with a minimum of dirty looks. 

--Spark O.C.

Reviewed by Rick Stein