Cleansed - Review

Almeida Theatre, London

****

Written by Sarah Kane

Directed by Rebecca Frecknall

Pearl Chanda

Sarah Kane’s Cleansed is a bleak tale. A 100 minutes straight through detailing man’s inhumanity to man and woman, and how power can be so easily abused. Not for the faint hearted, Kane’s narrative is graphic and under the gifted helming of Rebecca Frecknall, the stagecraft on display at the Almeida is as brilliant as Kane’s writing is horrific.

Set in and around some dystopian institution, Leo Bill is Tinker, the play's authority figure and the rotten apple at the core of the evening’s malevolence. Sexually inadequate, his misogyny and sadism knows no limits as he wreaks unspeakable forms of torture upon the institution’s inmates.

 

All of Kane’s characters are deeply damaged, desperately needing care but at Tinker’s hands all they receive is cruelty, meted out in gruesome manifestations of rape, sodomy and violence that descend into inevitable nadirs of murder and suicide.

Alongside Bill, Frecknall’s cast are all magnificent. Pearl Chanda, Luke Cinque-White,Lizzy Connolly, Jack Riddiford, Parth Thakerar and Stuart Thompson capturing their respective characters' emotional pain and despair and, when required, brilliantly depicting the physical pain of the inhumane atrocities that are forced upon them.

Ingeniously, Frecknall leaves little to our imagination - and it is a credit to the show’s intimacy director (Ingrid Mackinnon), illusionist (Chris Fisher) and special make-up designer (Susanna Peretz) that, together with the cast’s sublime acting skills, this nightmare is played out with such conviction.

Harrowing drama, stunningly performed.

Runs until 29th August

Photo credit: Marc Brenner