Ravenhill’s Depraved but Powerful ‘Shopping’ Spree

In Mark Ravenhill’s stark worldview, “Shopping and F-----g” define the length and breadth of meaning in modern life. It should tell you something that I can’t even print the title, much less many details, about this notorious London hit, which makes a powerful, well-performed L.A. debut at the Celebration Theatre. Suffice it to say this brutally unsentimental portrait of outcast London youths coping with various forms of addiction makes the film “Trainspotting” look like a romantic romp.

Levels of deceit and betrayal are all that pass for communication between junkie Mark (Andrew Ableson), his lover Robbie (Melik Malkasian) and their flat mate Lulu (Mariam Parris). Their parallel stories unfold amid images of shocking squalor punctuated with mordant humor--both evoked with grim efficiency in Michael Donald Edwards’ staging. Mark’s aborted drug rehab and subsequent tryst with a pitifully damaged “rent boy” (Steven Klein) send the pair on a desperate shopping spree with stolen credit cards. Meanwhile, Lulu’s attempt to find a job lands her and Robbie in the clutches of a dangerously volatile mobster (Michael James Reed), who instructs them in the primal importance of money.

Straddling self-destruction and depravity, these characters present very little to care about, which is Ravenhill’s most unsettling point. In one of the play’s sparsely poetic exchanges, Robbie reflects on the stories we make up to get by--how long ago the stories were big, but the world grew up and now all we have left are our own little stories. When the connective tissue of humanity has been so irreparably severed, the play screams, there’s nothing left to do except shop and you-know-what.

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“Shopping and F-----g,” Celebration Theatre, 7051 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends April 9. $20. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.