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.

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. 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 fucking is a job. Ravenhill’s play is a prophetic vision of our twenty-first century world. It received its world premiere in 1996 in a production by Out of Joint and the Royal Court Theatre, and has been published in this edition to coincide with the 2016 revival of the play at the Lyric Hammersmith, London.

"An omen of the new century" - Evening Standard

"Harshly, wittily, Shopping and Fucking connects commerce and pleasure in graphic modern terms ... Ravenhill is one of the most arresting talents to have arrived in the British theatre during the 1990s" - Financial Times

"Plunges you into a world of disposability, disconnection and dysfunction, where relationships to be trusted have to be reduced to transactions ... Strong stuff" - Independent

"A contemporary classic" - Sunday Telegraph

"A theatrical phenomenon" - Daily Telegraph