Sarah Kane's Cleansed was much berated for graphic violence during her lifetime, but the critic notes that if one scolds playwrights for blood-letting, one would have to condemn the Greeks, Grand Guignol, and Shakespeare. The play's in-yer-face horror includes rapes, mutilations, and beatings, with a character reflecting: 'Death isn’t the worst thing they can do to you.'
Rebecca Frecknall's revival at the Almeida theatre is courageous given the notoriously difficult staging requirements. The gamble pays off, with the production resonating powerfully in our violent world. Frecknall's formidable creative accomplishment balances appalling cruelty with human yearning for love and beauty.
Characters and Setting
Set in a university that suggests a concentration camp, the torturer Tinker (Leo Bill) is unimposing, personifying the banality of evil. He targets sexually aberrant characters: gay couple Rod (Parth Thakerar) and Carl (Luke Cinque-White), brother and sister Graham (Jack Riddiford) and Grace (Pearl Chanda), a peep show dancer (Lizzy Connolly), and prisoner Robin (Stuart Thompson). The cast performs difficult scenarios without melodrama.
Tinker's cruelty is a puzzle; whether motivated by power, principle, or sadism is never explained. The play evokes an Orwellian system tyrannising those deemed aberrant in gender or sexual identity. Madeleine Girling's stage design has a grimy, institutional feel, evoking a chilling ordinariness.
Technique and Impact
Kane's play interrogates the limits of theatre and representation. Frecknall oscillates between realism and poetic vein, with characters in extreme pain moving in expressive dance. Ingrid Mackinnon's intimacy direction brings passion and romance without voyeurism. George Dennis and Angus MacRae's sound design combines blazing romance with thrumming electric dread.
The cruelty becomes draining, but in a world of streamed violence, it re-sensitises. The play also offers sudden beauty, love declarations, and humour. The message is strangely romantic: the human need for love and beauty persists as vital as violence, even for Tinker.
Resonance and Context
The 1998 play was part of an unrealised war trilogy. Kane's first play Blasted responded to the Bosnia conflict. Watching Cleansed today reminds of wars before (references to Titus Andronicus) and after, including Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and Gaza.
The production feels protracted at times, slowing in pace. But it ends with a sense that love endures. The play runs at the Almeida theatre, London, until 29 August.
