Shopping and F***ing

by Mark Ravenhill

Shopping and F***ing is a play designed to shock. Issues such as drugs and homosexuality are brilliantly dealt with. Ravenhill writes about a group of young Londoners whose lives are so dysfunctional and disconnected that their relationships are reduced to nothing but transactions and make-believe stories.

Sweet Panic

by Stephen Poliakoff

Our world is changing so fast, yet we all pretend to be in control of it. Maybe it would be better to say we don't know what the hell is going on.
As the complexity of modern life accelerates and we move further into the yawning unknown of the new millennium, one response seems more and more valid - PANIC!
'Sweet Panic' is an exhilarating and gripping evocation of a society overwhelmed by its own loss of control. In a new twist on the psycho-thriller genre, child psychologist Clare Attwood is stalked by the vengeful mother of one of her patients.
In searing and potently comic detail 'Sweet Panic' defines the ways in which contemporary humanity shields itself from the looming and monstrous presence of "the unknown". Our fantasies about a past when all was safe and familiar, our obsessions with detail and patterns, with finding someone to blame; and our escape into sexuality, consumerism, drugs and inevitably, madness. This was the 5th time that highly regarded Bath University Student Theatre have performed in the Ustinov Studio, supported by the Happold Link.

33

A city. A towerblock. A man answers the phone in the middle of the night and pretends to be someone else. A writer passes off someone else's work as his own. A photograph is mistaken and the wrong man is followed. Instructions are misheard. Leads go nowhere. Dead ends, blind alleys, red herrings. All caught by the impassive eye of a surveillance camera.
Inspired by The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, 33 is a dark and filmic evocation of urban life.
Three companies have collaborated in the making of this piece: multimedia performance company dirty:theatre; Bath University Student Theatre; and the Merlin Young Company, resident company at the Merlin Theatre, Frome.

Confusions

by Alan Ayckbourn

Confusions is a series of short plays studying the comic interactions of lonely people. Whether we see a mother who can only relate to children, a failing seduction attempt, an argument in a restaurant, or just people looking for someone to talk to in the park the characters are all looking for someone to relate to outside of their own heads.