Can he do it again? Having roused the nation with Shopping and Fucking, will Mark Ravenhill's new play cause a similar stir? Possibly not since it's as much about socialism as sex. And, while I found it bright, sharp and funny, I feel it sometimes falls prey to the soundbite values it condemns.
Ravenhill presents us with six characters, whirling around a recognisably garish contemporary London. Chief among them is Nick, who has spent 15 years in jail for doing over an asset-stripper.
But, on release, he finds everything has drastically changed. His militant old mate, Helen, is now a worthy local councillor. And when he falls in with lap-dancer Nadia, her HIV-positive best friend and his disco-trash Russian lover, he is in a cultural world he no longer recognises.
Instead of anger and rage at injustice, he discovers drift, acceptance and a scorched-earth attitude to the day before yesterday. It's a good point: that we have substituted hedonism for political fury and that we live in an eternal present.
Ravenhill keeps the plot spinning effectively over 90 minutes through the search for Nick by his original victim. And, when they do encounter each other in the play's penultimate scene, there's a sense of two exhausted combatants coming into collision. The representatives of capitalism and socialism finally meet and the former avers: "I think that we both miss the struggle."
But, while the scene is playfully ironic, it also exposes the work's reluctance to get engaged in argument at a detailed level. Equally, when Helen and Nick lock horns over whether it's better to go for social amelioration or radical protest we never get far enough into the debate. Ravenhill accepts Helen's point that improving people's daily lot is worthwhile yet emotionally he craves Nick's anger.
In truth, Ravenhill's real strength lies in social observation rather than political analysis. He records, with mordant accuracy, the world of Nadia for whom "nothing means anything" and there is a painful scene in which her best friend prefers death to a pill-prolonged life.
At these moments you feel Ravenhill is writing from hard-earned knowledge. And Max Stafford-Clark's production, set against filmic projections by Julian McGowan, exactly captures the desolate speed of modern London.
Nick Dunning as the angrily perplexed Nick, Sally Rogers as the politically gradualist Helen, Russell Barr as the terminally sick Tim and David Sibley as the capitalist apologist also give the kind of high-definition performances you expect from Out of Joint.
It's a rancidly accurate evening. I'd now like to see Ravenhill move on to define more precisely the kind of socialism in which he believes.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable
** Mediocre * Terrible
