AND BABY MAKES CHAOS: From the Sydney Morning Herald

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Victorian wet nurses, rentboys, global greed and explicit sex. Ah, it must be a play by Mark Ravenhill, the British playwright who shot to fame with his 1996 play Shopping and F***ing.

His 1998 work, Handbag (or The Importance of Being Someone), is the latest production from Focus Theatre, co-directed by its co-founders, Alice Livingstone and Pete Nettell.

Handbag explores the role of parenting in an age of complex sexuality, sperm banks, surrogacy and aspirational materialism.

"This is very much a morality play," Nettell says.

"What are we doing with our culture, particularly with babies, and our responsibility towards other people? We neglect that. We make choices for selfish reasons and we buy into this whole idea that we're just individuals. We're heading down a path of loss." ...

With much satire, witty language, explicit sex scenes and other examples of Ravenhill's brand of shock theatre, Handbag ostensibly focuses on lesbian couple Mauretta and Suzanne and their close friends, gay couple David and Tom.

Tom is the sperm donor; Mauretta is to be artificially inseminated. All four, somewhat delusionally in turns out, believe they can be the best modern-day parents possible.

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posted by Eve at 5:56 PM | link

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