Shopping and ****ing at the SiLo Theatre

By FRANCES TILL

Controversial British playwright Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and ****ing is, for the most part, about shopping and ****ing: the acts, the things that lead up to the acts, the things that flow on from the acts, the joke inherent in the phrase, and a bit of socialist polemic about it all.

Ravenhill is a sparkling writer and constructs marvellous, distressing scenes that can be compelling even when they're hobbling about on the crutches of post-modern irony and overburdened metaphor.

His sense of plot can be called naive, which is perhaps why Shopping ... is so often likened to a fable.

Taken individually, the scenes are exemplars of British social realism, illuminating a gritty, clueless underclass in high relief. Strung together they're, well, strung together, despite the best efforts of director Stuart Devenie.

Here's the arc of dramatic tension: Mark (Shane Bosher) opens with an act of projectile vomiting when his lover Robbie (Charlie McDermott) and their room-mate, and perhaps girlfriend, Lulu (Emily O'Brien-Brown) try to feed him to settle him down after a long crack binge.

He promptly leaves to check himself in at a rehab clinic and has a cycle of erotic adventures that lead him back home for a cathartic showdown. At the end of the play, Lulu and Robbie succeed in feeding Mark noodles of the meal-in-a-cup variety, with much Happy Families laughter. Clearly, Mark has gone through something and is now better.

Actually, everyone in the play has gone through several things and none is better, nor are they more sympathetic for their voyages.

At the performance level, O'Brien-Brown displays an arrestingly hypnotic stage presence when she has full control of her character, but the most exceptional moments are turned in by the minor characters.

Brian, a film-maker/drug kingpin who sees equal beauty in The Lion King and a Bach cello movement, is played with eerie menace and Hopper-esque edges by Jon Brazier.

Gary, the 14-year-old rent boy who begs to be undone while being done by anyone who is willing to stand in for his father, is evocatively realised by David van Horn.