Cleansed: Review
Treat old plays like new and new plays like old.
I think treating new writing with the same critical respect as Ibsen or Shakespeare and treating Ibsen with the same freshness as a new work, will generally pay dividends in a production.
Sarah Kane’s Cleansed, directed by Sean Holmes, at the Arcola has been treated with respect. A very concerted effort to get to the heart and soul of the play.
Still, Billington can not be reconciled to Kane’s vision.
Where as Maxie Szalwinska thinks it “comes close to achieving the cathartic effect of Greek tragedy….” and “it’s about the capacity to feel, gnawing need and the annihilating power of love”
It’s an ambiguous institution and the shadowy “doctor” Tinker seems to be running “cures” and experiments. Torturing people. Testing the bounds of what people will and won’t do for love.
In the power of the nameless institution, Tinker scissors off tongues, chops off limbs, mutilates genitals and causes his subjects no end of pain, embarrassment, cruelty and boredom. This is reflected in what the audience feels viscerally. I saw cringing. I saw yawns. [Slowly making someone eat a box of chocolates intended for their loved one becomes almost visual art – painful, embarrassing, cruel, boring].
Yet, juxtaposed and intertwined with these sanctioned acts of violence are moments of love and tenderness. All the characters have their moment of tenderness; kisses, touches, sex, dancing, all the things which can rebel against cruelty.
Kane writes in to her play, a moment where flowers are meant to blossom on stage. The projected images are pale imitations of the power of that image.
Imagine: this dark, tortuous institution suddenly ablaze with blooming flowers.
That for me is the central image of the play.
Where there’s darkness and violence and torture and cruelty, there’s still love and tenderness and dancing and reaching out.
“I love you now. I’m with you now. I’ll do my best, moment to moment, not to betray you. Now. That’s it. No more. Don’t make me lie to you.”
Kane does not explain it. She simply shows this vision. The actors and director perform brilliantly to bring this vision to life.
It’s not an easy play. Most won’t “like” it. Probably many wouldn’t enjoy it. However it offers a vision of the world and our place in it that makes us stop and think. Some will leave the play, somehow different than before the play began and I suppose that’s what good art does.
At the Arcola Theatre until Dec 3rd – 020 7503 16 46 (box office)
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About me
I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.
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Recent Work
Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).
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Nakamitsu
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Yellow Gentlemen
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[...] The theatre of Shakespeare’s time was much more in tune with death and gore and so was the audience. Now we see it comic book style in the movies or really not at all. Should our theatre today be more in touch with death as well as life? Should our society? Maybe that’s one reason we have such a strong reaction to Sarah Kane. [...]