Blasted…

Playwright Sarah Kane cut quite a swathe through 1990s British theatre. Her stark and often brutal plays, including Blasted, Cleansed and the posthumously produced 4.48 Psychosis, earned her a loyal following – and made her the subject of blistering attacks from a right-wing press shocked by her scripts’ graphic language and violence.

Well that’s basically what I knew about Sarah Kane before last night and, as anything that upsets the Daily Mail is usually good enough for me, I headed to Soho Theatre confident I was in for a good night, especially as this version of Blasted was being produced by Graeae Theatre.

And Graeae didn’t disappoint with a smartly staged and interesting production with strong performances, particularly from Gerard McDermot as racist, misogynist journalist Ian and Dave Toole as the un-named soldier who rapes Ian and sucks his eyes out before shooting himself.

Kane includes stage directions as spoken dialogue and Graeae included this on a projected backdrop so it became part of the audio-description. This helped emphasise the Spartan dialogue and the backdrop also played film of a signed interpretation of the play which added a haunting quality to the production.

Sadly it was the script I had major problems with. They were a few funny lines and the power struggle between Ian and his young lover was tightly written but after that it was just violence and brutality metaphorically hammering home the point that Kane’s world view is one without love, hope or redemption.

It was grim without the humour, interest or eloquence of a Howard Barker and brutal without the style or epic sweep of an Edward Bond, both of who have covered similar thematic territory about the loss of humanity and the depravity of humankind but in a more dramatically affecting way.

This is the first Kane play I’ve seen and the others may be better but it had a feeling of the emperor’s new clothes to me. I can see why young theatre radicals would possibly think it was – and possibly still is – something challenging but for me it was essentially a badly written play whose only saving grace was a strong production.