In U.K. theater news, Mark Ravenhill has a new play at the Royal National called “Mother Clap’s Molly House”. The play intertwines both a contemporary storyline and one set in a 1726 London “molly house” (gay meeting place). Sodomy is somehow involved. The religious right are, predictably, already up in arms. I saw Ravenhill’s first big production, “Shopping and F***king”, back in 1998. I wasn’t a big fan, but it wasn’t because of the anal sex or the toplessness. I just thought it was a sucky play. It should’ve been called “Shopping, F***king, and Ramen Noodles”, because that’s the vision of my generation that it presented. And no amount of loud music and neon lights can paper over juvenile, sucky writing. But anyway, I still don’t see any problem with nationally-funded theater doing avant garde productions. I’m probably going to try to see his new one, just as an act of support for the RNT.
Important Note
This site features content going all the way back to 2000. The posts you’ll read reflect my views and writing style at the time. While I have gone back to clean up a few of them, I think it’s important not to sanitise too much. This site is a record of who I am and how I’ve grown. Any blog post written years ago may not reflect who I am today, nor how I would write about the same topic today.