Lyric Hammersmith to Present SHOPPING AND F***ING This Autumn

As the Lyric's smash-hit Bugsy Malone, returns to the stage for a limited 12-week run, the theatre announces a new production to complete their autumn season - Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and f-ing. The Lyric's main house will be transformed for this production with part of the audience seated on the stage, creating a bold intimate experience within their Victorian auditorium.

This autumn the Lyric is also pleased to welcome back Frantic Assembly to the main stage with their new production Things I Know to be True by leading Australian playwright Andrew Bovell, which premiered to critical acclaim in Adelaide in May. An exciting international co-production with the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Things I know to be True is co-directed by Scott Graham and Geordie Brookman. Over the festive season Panto returns to the Lyric when Aladdin flies into Hammersmith on his magic carpet. Written by Joel Horwood, Aladdin will be full of colourful characters, live music, lots of laughs and of course the magical Genie.

The Lyric's Artistic Director Sean Holmes said: 'It's a privilege and a delight to stage the 20th anniversary production of Mark Ravenhill's prophetic play. What is the internet now if it isn't shopping and f-ing?'

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Shopping and f-ing

By Mark Ravenhill Directed by Sean Holmes

A Lyric Hammersmith Production

Friday 07 October - Saturday 05 November 2016
Press Night: Wednesday 12 October 2016

'It's summer. I'm in a supermarket. It's hot and I'm sweaty. Damp. And I'm watching this couple shopping. I'm watching you. And you're both smiling. You see me and you know sort of straight away that I'm going to have you.'

Twenty years since its explosive premiere, Olivier Award-winning director Sean Holmes brings Mark Ravenhill's provocative first play, Shopping and f-ing back to the stage.

With a raw mixture of black humour and bleak philosophy, the play follows three disconnected young adults whose lives have been reduced to a series of transactions in an emotionally shrink-wrapped world. A place where Shopping is sexy and f-ing is a job.

'An omen of the new century' (Evening Standard), Ravenhill's play is a prophetic vision of our 21st-century world. Widely regarded as one of the most influential pieces of contemporary British theatre this rarely staged play is a must see.

The Lyric's main house will be transformed for this production with part of the audience seated on the stage, creating a bold intimate experience within their Victorian auditorium. All stalls and onstage stalls seats will be £25.

Mark Ravenhill said "I've enjoyed a long and fulfilling association with the Lyric - Faust Is Dead (1997), Handbag (1998), Pool (2005), Show 6 (2015) for the Lyric's Secret Theatre - and so it's very exciting that they are reviving my first play Shopping and f-ing, twenty years after it premiered. I'm looking forward to seeing what a new generation of theatre audiences make of the play."

Casting to be announced.

Written by Mark Ravenhill
Directed by Sean Holmes
Designed by Jon Bausor and Tal Rosner
Costume Design by Grace Smart
Lighting Design by Anna Watson

Sean Holmes is Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith. He has most recently directed the Lyric's critically acclaimed productions of Simon Stephens's Herons and Olivier Award nominated Bugsy Malone and co-directed Filter's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2010 he revived Sarah Kane's Blasted at the Lyric and the production was awarded the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. His other theatre credits at the Lyric include A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts, Chamber Piece, A Streetcar Named Desire, Woyzeck, Cinderella, Desire Under the Elms, Morning, Have I None, Saved, Ghost Stories, Three Sisters and Comedians. He recently directed The Plough & the Stars as part of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin's centenary celebrations, which is currently touring the US.

Mark Ravenhill's first play Shopping and f-ing was premiered by Out of Joint and the Royal Court in 1996. Subsequent plays include Faust Is Dead and Handbag (both Actors Touring Company); Some Explicit Polaroids (Out of Joint at the Ambassadors Theatre); Mother Clap's Molly House and Citizenship (both National Theatre); Pool No Water (Frantic Assembly at the Lyric Hammersmith), The Cut (Donmar Warehouse); Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (Paines Plough) and Over There (Royal Court). From 2012 to 2014, Mark was playwright in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company, producing a new version of Brecht's Galileo and a new play Candide inspired by Voltaire (both Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon). Mark's work in music theatre includes a new English version of Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea with additional material by Michael Nyman (King's Head); Ten Plagues, a song cycle for Marc Almond with composer Connor Mitchell (Traverse Theatre) and Elysium with composer Rolf Wallin for the Norwegian Opera. Mark is the co-creator of the ITV sitcom Vicious.