Some Explicit Polaroids
Putney Arts Theatre

Shirley Dent

Angry young men. Don't you just love 'em? With Some Explicit Polaroids, Mark Ravenhill wants to do anger, to say why we were angry and why anger doesn't matter any more. But as you watch this play you realise that angry young men ain't what they used to be.

The basic premise is clever, a plot device is supposed to open up the gulf between the way the world was and the way the world is, that aims to show the basic incongruity of the oft mentioned 'big picture'. Ravenhill takes the main character Nick, played by Darren Lee, out of circulation for twenty years.

Nick was jailed in 1984 for the attempted murder of an archetypal capitalist pig, perhaps taking gesture politics a little too far. But with this clever idea the problems with the play start. The Nick device is a set-up to allow Ravenhill to expound and explore ideas about politics and the way politics are today, through the relationships of a group of interrelated characters.

But the characters are cut-outs, off-the-peg creations that act as conduits for a basic trot through a basic introduction to the-horrid-world-of-capitalism-and-oh-its-a-bit-of-a-tricky-bugger-as-well-because-its-not-just-like-it-was-in-1984. Nick is an angry young man, bellowing away about something to be angry about, the sort of 'Look at me, I'm a socialist' who was a pain in the butt then and now. Because of this mish-mash of ideas and characters, two things that have to be right for Ravenhill to pull off the ambition of this play, are wrong.

A good playwright can give us convincing relationships, make us realise again the way we are with each other. An extraordinary playwright can open up a world of ideas, make us see the way we could be with each other. Mark Ravenhill is a good playwright but not yet (with this play) an extraordinary one. The result is unconvincing both on the level of ideas and of characters.

This weakness in Some Explicit Polaroids is not helped by the fact that the Chelsea Players gleefully don the stiff-as-a-board cut-out clichés of the characters. A young company who obviously want to produce challenging theatre (a they should be applauded for that), here is my advice with regard to their production of Some Explicit Polaroids. Isabella Valenzula as Nadia: Calm down, love - even the most ground-down Spearmint Rhino regular doesn't cheese it up, hands flapping and squelching, at every available opportunity. Pete Picton as Jonathan: stop acting like you have a rod stuck up your arse.

The Chelsea Players billed Mark Ravenhill as 'a theatrical enfant terrible who seeks only to shock… yet closer examination of Ravenhill's work proves that to presume shock and scandal are the sum total of his intent is to miss out on fine dramatic set-pieces, sparky language, political and intellectual examination, moral mazes'.

The problem with Some Explicit Polaroids is that it is neither shocking nor intellectual enough. Seeing someone wanking off a corpse just leaves me cold (as well as the corpse). The ideas about politics seem to be stuck in a strange Thatcherite timewarp.

Anger in art should shock, should puncture the balloon of your world. The anger of Jimmy Porter was seductive, was about where he was, not what he was. The same could be said of Renton in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. It's a pity that Ravenhill's angry young man fails us. The core idea is a worthy dramatic device, no more. As my companion in Putney said 'if Tom Stoppard had written this play it would have been wonderful'.

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