It is a truism that “transgressive” art is for the most part drearily conformist—shocking and controversial only about things its audience already agrees on: Giuliani is a Nazi, religious people are repressed sex fiends, etc., etc. So it comes as a pleasant surprise to find, at London’s Royal National Theatre, a play that is genuinely transgressive. Not in its many scenes of simulated sodomy punctuated by “butt plugs,” “rimming,” “golden showers”—yawn, yawn, been there, done that, you’re probably saying—but in the message its many gay sex acts convey.

Mother Clap’s Molly House is by Mark Ravenhill, celebrated author of the 1996 hit Shopping and Fucking, with its memorable finale of an anal rape with a fork (shopping and forking?). Five years on, Ravenhill has graduated from the bad-boy precincts of the Royal Court to the mainstream respectability of the National, but hi ...

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