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

A Taste Of Honey - Review

Trafalgar Studios, London


****


Written by Shelagh Delaney
Directed by Bijan Sheibani

Gemma Dobson, Tom Varey and Jodie Prenger

Arriving back in London from a tour that appropriately started off in Salford, the National Theatre’s revival of their 2014 take on Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste Of Honey makes for a glimpse of Britain’s North that is timely and refreshing. Viewed too, through the prism of December 2019’s General Election, that saw the traditional trade-union and Labour supporting regions switch their political allegiance, gives Delaney’s writing an even more pronounced perception.

Now 60 years old, the play tells a bleak working class narrative of Helen, a single Manchester mum and her teenage daughter Jo, both women craving love, seeking their own “taste of honey”. Jodie Prenger and Gemma Dobson play mother and child and each is starkly brilliant in their interpretations. Prenger’s Helen is as wise and whip-smart as she is needy and lonely. She knows the promises made to her by chancer boyfriend Peter (Tom Varey) will prove hollow, but her neediness sees her pursue the man anyway.

Dobson plays a different game in her quest for comfort and love – allowing herself first to be seduced by Jimmie (Durone Stokes) a black sailor on shore leave, before then forming a powerfully strong friendship with homosexual Geoffrey (Stuart Thompson). But this is 1950s Britain – where neither people of colour, nor gays were accepted by wider society. Speaking with me as the show opened, Prenger commented that while Britain has come a long way since Delaney’s time, there is still some distance yet to go.

Bijan Sheibani’s helming of the piece effectively delivers Delaney’s devastating text. With a three piece band on stage providing a backdrop that only adds to the play’s scorching commentary A Taste Of Honey offers up an unflinching mirror to us all.

Runs until 29th February 2020

Photo credit: Marc Brenner