Assault Play

By Richard Zoglin

It's the play that dare not speak its name. In London the title of Mark Ravenhill's first work for the stage was obscured by discreet asterisks. In the U.S., where the ethics of oral sex is now bandied about on the evening news, the full obscenity has been restored, thus preventing most publications (including this one) from printing the play's name. But Shopping and F______ is more than just a shock-provoking title. The play opens with a character vomiting, assaults us with rough language and features brutally graphic scenes of sadomasochistic sex. Ah, the magic of live theater.

Just opened off-Broadway in a strong if not ideally cast production, Shopping revolves around three young London roommates. Mark (Philip Seymour Hoffman) leaves for a detox center in an effort to kick his heroin habit. Robbie and Lulu (Justin Theroux and Jennifer Dundas Lowe) keep busy by dealing drugs for a scuzzy TV producer (Matthew Sussman). They reunite when Mark brings home a young hustler (Torquil Campbell), who takes part in a sordid bout of fantasy game playing that makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? look like Scrabble.

"We need something," pronounces the TV producer. "A guide. A talisman. A set of rules. A compass to steer us through this everlasting night." It's typical of this intense, unsettling play that the most truthful (and very nearly the only coherent) thoughts are expressed by the character who's a stand-in for Satan. The rest are a desperate, surprisingly poignant lot who are powerless to resist their appetites yet aware that facing up to them is part of the struggle toward salvation. That struggle, and this evening, are hard to shake off.

--By Richard Zoglin