Shopping and F*****g

Lyric Hammersmith

London W6

THERE'S something acutely poignant about Shopping and F*****g in an era of mass consumerism, instant gratification and ever-increasing body commodification through internet dating and sex apps like Tindr and Written by Mark Ravenhill two decades ago, the play still speaks to today as it follows four disconnected young adults whose lives appear to be reduced to a series of sexual, monetary and emotional transactions.

Through the prism of gay relationships, the play dissects those interchanges with prophetic precision, with all connections between the characters shaped and refracted by them.

Robbie (Alex Arnold) pays for sex, while Lulu (Sophie Wu) has been “bought” by Mark (Sam Spruell) who, in turn, buys the services of young rent boy Gary (David Moorst). The latter, paid for companionship, ends up paying for his own destruction.

In raw and incisive scenes where human relationships morph from the warmly intimate to the overtly commercial and vice versa, director Sean Holmes’s production brilliantly captures that sense of dislocation and He sets the action in the lurid TV studio of a home shopping channel, with cameras that are supposed to promote sale goods sometimes filming sex, karaoke interludes with 1990s pop songs and actors trying to sell stuff on the side.

The frenetic speed of the acting marks the giddy rhythm of a society increasingly bound by its hedonistic consumption of drugs, feelings, food, culture, entertainment and love.

The ensuing nausea and harm is powerfully and ironically (mis)explained by the angel-type character Brian, played superbly by Ashley McGuire.

“Civilisation is money,” he tells us. “Money is civilisation...The getting is cruel, is hard, but the having is civilisation. Then we are civilised.”

A must-see.

Runs until November 5, box office: lyric.co.uk