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Sarah Kane was widely criticized for the graphic violence in his games during his lifetime. But critics beware: if you choose to criticize the playwrights for allowing too much blood and human cruelty, you should also criticize the Greeks, the Grand Guignol and Shakespeare.
Maybe it’s the look on Kane’s face that’s so frustrating. Certainly in this 1998 drama there is no shock due to the horror, which comes from the spectacular brutality. “Death is not the worst thing they can do to you,” says a man, and his words reveal themselves to the rape, mutilation and beatings that follow.
In the case of The Cleansed, there are many ways his revival could go wrong, not least because it’s notoriously difficult to ride, and rides that require a rat to walk off with amputated legs and a giant sunflower to explode on the ground. He is a brave leader Rebecca Frecknall taking it. Gambling pays off, both because of its pride in this violent world and its impressive creativity.
Kane’s first play, Blasted, was a response to the conflict in Bosnia in the 1990s, and this third play was a part of the war that never happened. Viewed today, in Frecknall’s powerful production, moving and dramatic, you are reminded of all the wars that have taken place before (the cutting out of a man’s tongue and its mutilation recalls Titus Andronicus) and after. The scene in which the Kinks’ song Days is thrown into the torture chamber, while sympathetic, has some shadows. “torture Lite” at Guantánamo. Again and again, you are reminded of images from Abu Ghraib prison, which embarrassed the prisoners and the American guards. Israel’s brutality and violence in Gaza is also similar.
Living in a university that seems to evoke a concentration camp, Tinker (Leo Bill) is the only “visible” bully here (some violence is done by invisible bullies). He is apparently unimposing, showing a person Hannah Arendt banality, perhaps. He fights with people he sees as gay, especially two gay men, Rod (Parth Thakerar) and Carl (Luke Cinque-White), and threatens his brother and sister Graham (Jack Riddiford) and Grace (Pearl Chanda), confuses a dancer (Lizzy Connolly) and another prisoner named Robin (Stuart Thompson).
The players play many of the game’s challenges without complications or melodrama. Tinker’s brutality is still shocking, especially the performance he tortures with. Is he motivated by power, principle or pure sadness? It was never explained. However, the message is clear: war and its torture are pointless, cruel and insulting to those around them. There is a sense of an Orwellian system of oppression of those who are deemed to be gender or sexuality incorrect (rats, not seen here, also remind Orwell). Madeleine Girling’s stage appearance has a sinister, lingering feel of a hidden corridor in a mental asylum or prison. Again, it leads to a cold habit.
Like all of Kane’s works, this play questions the limits of theater and representation at its end and the destruction of the conventional form. Showing the violence that takes place in the stadium, through various means, does not protect us from the horror of the viewer, and Frecknall walks skillfully between the real and the poetic vein. When the characters are in the throes of pain, their movements become like rhythmic dances. There are lyrics in it, but not in the way they spice up the violence. Most importantly, it doesn’t look like crap, either.
Sex is also a kind of dance: bodies are not connected but love and power are conveyed through choreography. Ingrid Mackinnon’s intimate direction brings joy and romance, not voyeurism. George Dennis’s vocal design, with music by Angus MacRae, combines powerfully with their fusion of fiery romance and electronic menace.
For such a small play, it is long, and it moves slowly. The violence is devastating to watch – but in a world where images of violence are fed into our daily diet, it also inspires us, through its dissection.
Poetry also comes in other forms. There is sudden, triumphant beauty, declarations of love, romance and comedy. Staying close to Kane’s version of later theater, the play’s message is incredibly romantic: human need, perhaps even desire, love and beauty persist, every force as necessary as violence – even, we’re shown, for someone like Tinker.
