[Review] Mark Ravenhill and Plaines Plough: Product
Product sees playwright Mark Ravenhill’s return to the Fringe and his acting debut. Ravenhill plays a filmmaker pitching his newest script to young starlet Amy, over whom he paws and purrs as the salesman turned showman. The screenplay and product in question is ‘Mohammed & Me’ – a tale of love, lust and religious fundamentalism.
Ravenhill’s 45-minute monologue brilliantly projects the complex anxieties surrounding global terrorism into the glossy and glib world of film. Product exposes the theatricality behind the new language and imagery of terrorism emerging in today’s society, particularly peddled by tabloid scaremongers.
Setting the scene for his young star, Ravenhill describes Mohammed’s ‘dusky frame’ and Amy’s ‘abattoir conversion’ apartment. He walks through the camera angles and warbles the potential soundtrack, wonderfully undercutting his script’s most dramatic moments. Such touches bring roars of laughter from the audience and it is clear from this response that Product is achieving its aim: such subject matter cannot be given the Hollywood treatment; terrorism on celluloid makes for a generic spectacle, filled with blockbusting action and special effects.
This whole production should be placed in quotation marks: it functions perfectly as a comedy and critique, scoring top marks in both categories. Laughing at a topic usually reserved for grave, fearful discussions should not create a repentant audience: it should reveal to us exactly how much we are being made fools of by investing in the farce outside the theatre.
Who: Mark Ravenhill and Plaines Plough: Product
Where: Traverse Theatre
When : 21:45-22:30; 16th – 28th August (except 22nd)
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