Some Explicit Polaroids by Mark Ravenhill 16 – 26 September, Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington, www.towertheatre.org.uk/polaroidsFresh from prison, Nick returns to a world that has moved on without him – fast, glossy and emotionally numb. As he searches for connection, a younger generation chases sex, identity and a sense of belonging.
What was it about Some Explicit Polaroids that made you want to revisit Ravenhill’s exploration of LGBTQ+ life more than 25 years after its first production?
What drew me to Some Explicit Polaroids was how alive it still feels. Though rooted in the late 1990s, its questions about sex, identity, politics and the nature of relationships remain urgent. I love that it captures the era’s many facets, with LGBTQ+ life woven naturally into the characters’ experiences rather than defining them. That feels particularly interesting to me after directing Cock in 2024, which was more specifically concerned with the experience of being gay and with questioning whether sexuality is a choice. Some Explicit Polaroids never questions that: these people are what they are, and their sexuality is almost incidental. The play holds joy and freedom alongside loneliness, anger, hedonism and self-destruction. More than 25 years on, it’s fascinating to revisit that moment and ask what has changed and, perhaps more compellingly, what hasn’t.
Ravenhill’s play was provocative at the turn of the millennium; what surprised you most about discovering how its themes of sex, identity and politics resonate with audiences today?
I think I was most surprised by how little work we’ve had to do to make it feel relevant. There are obviously references that locate it firmly in the late 1990s, but emotionally and politically it feels remarkably current. The characters are trying to work out who they are, what they believe in and how to connect with each other in a world where the old certainties seem to have disappeared. That feels very recognisable now. We might express those anxieties differently today, but the need to belong, to be desired and to find something meaningful to believe in hasn’t changed very much.
As a gay director, how has your own perspective shaped the way you approach a play that examines both the joy and darker realities of LGBTQ+ life?
I think being gay inevitably affects the way I respond to the play, particularly because I remember something of the world it came out of. I was a teenager when Some Explicit Polaroids was first performed, at a point when attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people in Britain were very different from today. What I love about Ravenhill is that he allows queer characters to be complicated. They can be funny, selfish, loving, cruel, vulnerable, sexual and ridiculous. I’ve tried to approach them with that same lack of judgement. For me, representing LGBTQ+ life honestly means celebrating its joy without pretending that its darker or messier aspects don’t exist.
The Tower Theatre is pairing Some Explicit Polaroids with Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance — what do you think audiences might discover by experiencing these two very different plays alongside each other?
On the surface they could hardly be more different, but I think putting Wilde and Ravenhill alongside each other creates a really interesting conversation. Both writers are looking at societies with very particular ideas about sex, morality, respectability and who gets to live outside the rules. Wilde often hides his criticism beneath extraordinary wit and elegance, whereas Ravenhill puts things much more explicitly in front of us. Seeing them together allows an audience to think about how much society changed over that century, but also about the ways power, shame, desire and hypocrisy keep reappearing in different forms.
Ravenhill is known for challenging audiences rather than giving them easy answers; what questions do you hope your production leaves people wrestling with after they leave the theatre?
I’d be delighted if different people left the theatre disagreeing about what the play ultimately believes. It asks whether political ideals can really survive in a world dominated by individualism and consumerism, but it’s equally suspicious of nostalgia for a supposedly better past. I think it also asks what we owe one another. Is personal happiness enough? Can sex or love provide meaning? When does freedom become selfishness? Ravenhill refuses to tidy those questions up for us, and I don’t think the production should either.
How have you balanced preserving the rawness and provocativeness of Ravenhill’s original play with making it feel immediate and relevant to a contemporary audience?
We’ve tried not to impose 2026 onto the play, because its late-1990s setting is part of what makes it interesting. I don’t think you make Ravenhill contemporary by adding mobile phones or forcing modern references into it; you make it contemporary by taking the characters and their relationships seriously. The rawness is already there in the writing. Our job has been to make sure it never becomes something we’re observing at a safe historical distance. If the emotional stakes between these six people feel immediate and truthful, then suddenly the politics, sex, humour and provocation feel immediate too.