The commercial West End production of Mark Ravenhill's Shopping And Fucking has been running only since mid-January of this year and tickets are already easily available at the Leicester Square half-price ticket booth (London's answer to New York's TKTS service). This play of supposedly graphic representation of homosexual activities first opened at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in late September 1996, directed then as now by Max Stafford-Clark, best known for his championing new writers of generally confrontational and/or controversial material.

Shopping And Fucking was in 1996 generally well received by the critical community here and, as CurtainUp readers know, is now playing in New York. The current West End production is another example of the transfer to a commercial production of a work first developed and given life by a well respected publicly supported theatre. Readers will recall that this tradition really began with Trevor Nunn's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's incredibly successful musical adaptation of Cats.

In any event, the London commercial production was, for what it is, highly competent -- well presented. Of particular note to this viewer were the performances of Caroline Catz as Lulu, the play's only woman, and Tony Guilfoyle as Brian, the "establishment" figure in the underground world of the piece. Julian McGowan's neon-backed set was both clean in its simplicity and punchy in its integral relationship to Johanna Town's lighting and, especially, Paul Arditti's sound design.

Of more interest and with less success was Stafford-Clark's direction which raises a significant question: the use of simulated sex and its concomitant effect of the audience -- in this play as well as in such similar vehicles as the stage version of Trainspotting.

Why is it that such acts as depicted in Shopping And Fucking -- (anal licking, anal intercourse and fellatio -- are we really into this kind of critical discourse?) appear so false and undisturbing? Is this viewer inured to such activity by over-exposure (not by experience, if memory serves)? Or is it that the so-called graphic depiction of these activities are and must be staged to hide (or "cover" as we say in the biz) the naughty bits from the audience because not to cover them would be to commit the acts REALLY?! Or, finally, is it that the movies do it so much better?

Take the film of Trainspotting for example (the rights to Shopping And Fucking must already be in the hands of some enterprising film producer). The very same acts that are so safely covered on the stage (sex and drugs -- the rock and roll seems to work in the theatre as well as on the screen) are truly frightening on the big screen. The use of close-ups, effective editing and life-like props all contribute to the verisimilitude that the stage cannot achieve and that we as theatre-goers don't even want it to try to achieve.

What the theatre offers -- that film cannot -- is the immediacy and concentration of energy of live performers DOING IT before our very eyes! Film (and television) on the other hand are designed to fool us -- to make us believe that what we are seeing is really happening. This is not merely the extreme of Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" which all successful live theatre does indeed have us do. It is rather the conscious blurring of art and reality.

What leads us in the theatre to suspend our disbelief (our doubt, our scepticism, as it were) is the imaginative craft of the playwright as supported and amplified by able directors, designers and performers.

Thus, the energy of plays like Shopping And Fucking and movies like Trainspotting ultimately fail to achieve the very "in your face" confrontation that they purport to deliver. That the themes addressed by this play are important ones that deserve airing cannot be denied. The real question is whether or not the live stage is the best place to confront them. Are playwrights like Mark Ravenhill and directors like Stafford-Clark preaching to the converted?

And is the theatre the most effective pulpit for moral or social suasion?

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