Shopping and Fucking by Mark Ravenhill

Reviewed by Kristina Mannion Backstage West

"Filling in the play's linchpin role of Mark, the downbeat addict, Jay Michael Fraley also proves to be the linchpin of this production. His Mark is a sympathetic deadbeat, controlled by his desires for drugs, sex, and ever-elusive love. Even as he betrays and abandons Lulu (Lorianne Hill) and Robbie (Eric Eisenbrey), the two club kids with whom he shares an unusual slave-like relationship, we feel sorry for him as he struggles with his addictions-which lead him to Gary (Nicholas Downs), a young prostitute whose aberrant sexual tastes test Mark's love and also highlight the extremes of human enslavement. Given some of the more bitingly humorous lines, Fraley also exhibits comic skill. He is exceptionally hilarious in a scene that features a naughty joke about the Duchess of York and Princess Diana."