Mark Ravenhill is one of the most distinctive contemporary UK playwrights. He burst on to the theatre scene in 1996 with the huge hit Shopping and Fucking. He has continued to garner critical acclaim for plays that include Some Explicit Polaroids, Mother Clap's Molly House, Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, The Cut, Product, pool (no water), Citizenship, Ten Plagues, The Coronation of Poppea, Candide, Faust is Dead, Handbag, A Life in Three Acts, A Life of Galileo and Over There.

"In Shopping and Fucking, Mark Ravenhill made theatre relevant to the Thatcher generation. Now he's put videos and Net-surfing in Faust. And it's no less stunning" (Guardian)

Twenty-eight years before The Importance of Being Earnest, a young woman gives birth to a baby boy. Is it an accident when Nanny places him in a handbag and her unpublished novel into the pram? In 1998 a new baby is stolen and an academic discovers an unpublished novel of more than usual revolting sentimentality. From Victorian wet nurses to 90s sperm banks, Mark Ravenhill's play examines the role of parenting in an age of diverse sexualities, biological engineering and Tinky Winky's handbag.

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