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 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. October-5 November 2016 – Lyric Hammersmith. Directed by Sean Holmes. Alphabetically, this production starred Alex Arnold as Robbie, Ashley McGuire as Brian, David Moorst as Gary, Sam Spruell as Mark and Sophie Wu as Lulu. Nice to MITEM you: the 10th edition of the Madách International Theatre Meeting Opens in the Hungarian Capital 27th September 2023

Intimacy at a price … Sam Spruell (Mark) and Sophie Wu (Lulu). Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian The characters' names (Mark, Robbie and Gary) are taken from the Manchester boy band Take That, and from the singer Lulu who collaborated with them on their hit single Relight My Fire. Beginning 4 February 1998 International Tour [1] – starring Ashley Artus, Stephen Beresford, Charlie Condou, Karina Fernandez and Ian Redford. While the attractive videos help Holmes to achieve some rapid storytelling, the decision to put McGuire in a white suit only makes the character of Brian more clownesque than sinister. The constant use of slot machine and video-game imagery, the discovery of Gary in a cardboard delivery box and clumsy attempts at soliciting (ouch) audience participation — most grossly, the overtly ironic selling of badges and premium seats — is just too didactic for my taste. On the other hand, this show will totally delight anyone who wants a great big stonking fun evening, full of glitz and laughs. But if you, like the play’s characters, are looking for something more, some emotional connection, I fear you might be disappointed. Sensing Others through Dancing Bodies as Data: Review of Sense Datum by UBIN DANCE 26th November 2023

I was reminded of something someone once said to me: capitalism needs shame in the same way that politics needs fear. It made me think about the primal, human need to be part of the tribe. Shame is the fear that you’re not worthy of love and connection. Capitalism is preying on that idea – buy this and you’ll feel good, wear this and you’ll feel good. It fuels that sense of shame that we’re not already enough. It’s so dangerous on a worldwide level. February 1998 – 17 March 1998 – New York Theatre Workshop. Directed by Gemma Bodinetz and Max Stafford-Clark. Torquil Campbell as Gary, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Mark, Jennifer Dundas Lowe as Lulu, Matthew Sussman as Brian and Justin Theroux as Robbie. [2] [3] [4] 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. 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.

Pretty regular. The important thing for me right now, for my needs, is that this doesn’t actually mean anything, you know? Which is why I wanted something that was a transaction. Because I thought if I pay then it won’t mean anything. Do you think that’s right – in your experience?” This 20th-anniversary revival — all glorious flash, videos and music — works hard to distract us from the fact that the play is an old-fashioned flat-share drama featuring a group of friends, all of whom have been named after members of the 1990s Cool Brit boy band Take That. So there’s the idealistic stoner Robbie, the junkie Mark and the ever-enterprising Lulu. The plot shows how, in a series of rapid scenes, their attempts at self-improvement come under threat. Mark books into a clinic to cure his addiction, but is thrown out. On the streets, he finds Gary, a teenage rentboy. Meanwhile, Lulu’s attempt to get a job involves stripping off for middle-aged Brian, who tests her by giving her a bag of Ecstasy to sell. Cue dance scenes. And then some telephone sex. The story climaxes when Mark brings the damaged and self-destructive Gary home to meet Lulu and Robbie. 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.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 The acting is superb from Russell Barr as the "14 year old " rent boy to Tony Guilfoyle (Father Larry in Father Ted) as the vicious drug dealer. After the season at the Gielgud the play moves to the Edinburgh Festival. Nechutné, šokujúce, desivé, trpké, obscénne, veľa wtf momentov, zvláštne, príťažlivé, vtipné, silné...

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. Po jeho dráme Faust (is dead) som k nemu pociťovala určitý odpor - je to tenučká kniha, no trpela som pri nej. MR: What was it like for my career? Almost entirely positive, I think. The only thing was that people did have slightly weird expectations of me, that I was one of those characters. Even though I’ve dutifully done 20 years of appearing on Radio 4 and writing articles for The Guardian, there’s still an expectation that I will be a heroin addict. People are very disappointed by people who are educated; they’d rather a playwright hadn’t read anything. 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. 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-identifierThe humour which is scattered throughout the play including a delicious story about Diana and Fergie when they went on their alleged infamous nightclub visit dressed as the police.If you know nothing of this type of life see it for a rollercoaster experience. Benim kişiliğimi bir yönü var-kişiliğimin bağımlı hale gelen kısmı. Kendimi, başkalarıyla olan ilişkilerim bağlamında tanımlama eğilimim var. Anlıyorsun ya, kendimi tanımlayamıyorum. Bu yüzden, bundan kaçınmak için, kendimi tanımaktan kaçınmak için, başkalarına bağlanıyorum. Ki bu potansiyel olarak oldukça yıkıcı. Benim için yıkıcı"

Playwright Mark Ravenhill was educated at Bristol University where he studied English and Drama, and worked for the Soho Poly in London. Rule number one. Never believe a junkie. Because a junkie is a cunt. And when a junkie looks you in the eyes and says ‘I love you’ that’s when you know he’s gonna fill you full of shit.” Vytkla by som asi to, že je toho dakedy až príliš. Autor sa v texte - na celkom malej ploche - snaží spraviť všetko, len nech to má ten „Och, preboha, to čo má byť!" efekt. Text je prehustený metaforami, nechutnými a smutnými scénami, úzkosťou a hraničnými situáciami.

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!” LH: It’s important to see the play in the context of all the fantastic new work that was coming out in the Nineties from people like Mark, Sarah Kane, Joe Penhall and Martin McDonagh. It was an extraordinarily fertile time for playwriting – and the audiences for these writers were very young, or at least becoming much more mixed.