'Cleansed' review — Sarah Kane's intentionally gruesome play remains a harrowing watch

Read our review of Cleansed, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, now in performances at the Almeida Theatre to 29 August.

Summary

• Sarah Kane's play Cleansed is revived at the Almeida Theatre
• It's set in a nightmarish facility overseen by the sadistic Tinker
• Rebecca Frecknall directs an impressively committed cast

Mutilation, rape, incest and suicide are just some of the components designed to shock in Sarah Kane’s 1998 play Cleansed. A series of vignettes of intense suffering, it’s about as uncomfortable to watch as theatre can be – intentionally so – though Rebecca Frecknall’s production softens some of its harshest moments so that writhing in agony appears more like an interpretive dance, and would-be body-on-body struggles are implied as characters appear to fight with an invisible airborne force. (The artful deconstruction of these events echoes Frecknall's tackling of the rape scene in her award-winning A Streetcar Named Desire.) Nevertheless, it’s not an easy watch, and the violence often seems gratuitous.

It’s set in a nightmarish secure facility, overseen by the sadist Tinker (a character famously thought to be named after the theatre critic Jack Tinker, who verbally annihilated Kane’s debut play Blasted, and played here by Leo Bill). Carl (Luke Cinque-White) and Rod (Parth Thakerar) are unevenly invested in their secret relationship. Grace (Pearl Chanda) has come in search of her dead brother Graham (Jack Riddiford), whose haunting presence lingers on stage. Robin (Stuart Thompson) is a young man in body, but childlike in mind, and has never been taught to read or write. Beyond its walls, there's Lizzy Connolly’s Woman, a Lynchian apparition who surely only exists in Tinker’s mind.

Kane provides no context for the setting, nor backstories for how any of her characters have ended up there. There’s also no explanation for why they don’t leave, suggesting the prison is a mental as well as physical one – much like that which notoriously encaged the playwright. It’s as if their present pain is all there ever was.

And it’s gruesome. Hands are cut off, genitals castrated, tongues snipped, and drugs injected directly into eyeballs. Blood spurts often and furiously. It gives Titus Andronicus a run for its money. And with the nightly faintings over a graphic abortion scene at this same venue's production of The Years still fresh in memory, you have to wish it luck.

Chris Fisher’s illusions make it all the more convincing too, while Angus MacRae’s soundscape of unnerving, rhythmic knocking, thudding, drilling and nondescript peace-shattering sounds ensure there’s no respite. In this hellscape, each member of Frecknall’s brave cast carries their character’s marathon of agony and humiliation with impressive stamina.

The fleshy pink walls of Madeleine Girling’s set, where a corridor with glass windows runs behind a doctor’s room-cum-torture chamber, become increasingly bloodied over time. And when a field of brilliant yellow daffodils springs up in front, it’s as if their taunting promise of sunnier times remains just out of reach, or perhaps only obtainable in dreams or death.

The symbolism scorches. So while being confronted with this much violence paired with so little plot or, seemingly, purpose, does indeed seem gratuitous, in light of all we know about Kane’s own torment (she took her own life the following year), staging it now is really about keeping alive the memory of a playwright whose light shone too briefly. Still, it certainly doesn’t leave you feeling cleansed.

Cleansed is at the Almeida Theatre to 29 August.

Photo credit: Cleansed (Photos by Marc Brenner)