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

Cleansed - Review

National Theatre, London

**

Written by Sarah Kane

Directed by Katie Mitchell

Peter Hobday and Tom Mothersdale

Cleansed at the National Theatre disappointed for a number of reasons.

Sarah Kane's 1998 vision is of a fractured totalitarian place, somewhere, anywhere, where homosexuality is despised. Hers is a noble argument, for in today's world we do not need to look too far to be reminded such cultures and regimes are all around. 

But through the much missed Kane's troubled prism, the only characters on stage who experience a pure love are the gay couple. There are two manifestations of straight desire, one an incestuous fantasy and the other via a tawdry peep-show encounter.

The persecution of minorities is of course abhorrent, but that doesn't mean that all those who live amongst the majorities are wrong. Kane’s demonizing of the heterosexuals is all a little too sixth-former simplistic and shallow.

And as for the play's famed violence - the technical departments of the National Theatre, who typically deliver world class stagecraft from their state of the art facilities in SE1 should be ashamed.  Kane's intention was for the audience to be shocked by her depiction of on-stage mutilation and murder. If so, then the required visual and special effects demand execution (pun notwithstanding) by excellence. Not once did I wince, nor the audience around me gasp when horrible things happened in the National’s Dorfman space. I have seen fringe productions of Titus Andronicus do better and on a micro-budget too, producing tableaux that are literally unbearable to watch. The antics in Cleansed suggested those sixth-formers again, only this time let loose with their school's prop box.

The cast put in a brave and decent effort, but on this showing, Kane's work has been reduced to poorly produced and prurient torture porn. The penultimate night’s audience wasn’t shocked but if Kane had been there, she would have been.