In its bleak, ugly, lovely poetry and subversively moral amorality, Mark Ravenhill's multi-award winning play brings to mind bittersweet echoes of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. One senses that, for all his use of explicit language and raw sexual scenes, the writer is as much appalled by what he sees around him in contemporary society as the great poet was in his day.
There has been much talk in the local media as to whether Northern Ireland was ready for this play. But Jackie Doyle's fine Northern premiΦre for Prime Cut has crafted new texture, humour and depth to the brutal top storyline, layering on intriguing, conflicting nuances and glimpses into the human psyche. More than that, in casting Belfast actor Packy Lee as the central character and allowing him to use his own voice, this production presses home the hard fact that Northern Ireland has to be ready for it.
In Belfast, just as much as in the mean streets of London, where the play is set, emotionally damaged teenage boys are sexually abused and exploited, drug dealers wreak havoc on confused young lives and what seems to the outside world to be socially acceptable is, in reality, very far from that.
Lee gives an astonishingly courageous performance as Gary, innocent, unloved and fleeing from an abusive stepfather to the appalling temptations of London. Here his life joins that of three more desperate people: Robbie, Lulu and Mark, who lead a menage a trois existence, punctuated by HIV, petty theft, drug dealing and violence. From quiet, low-key beginnings, Dominic Carter and Mark Gillis are utterly credible as two very different men, locked in a genuinely loving relationship, while Maria Connolly is excellent as Lulu, a decent, talented girl caught up in the maelstrom of a life she barely understands. Richard Orr is the sleazy, uneducated fixer, who offers them the worst possible lifeline.
But it is the crumpled, tear-stained face of Lee that will linger in the mind, as he begs for more and still more horrible punishment as a substitute for the simple love that his young life has been denied.
Shopping and F***ing is at the Old Museum, Belfast, until Saturday October 13th (tel: 048 90 233332), then tours to the Millennium Forum, Derry, on October 15th, The Garage, in Monaghan, on October 16th, and the Riverside Theatre, in Coleraine, on October 17th