February 19, 2010
Sarah Kane is an interesting and troubling figure; a young playwright of real promise, as famous for the startling brutality of her themes and language as for her depression, mental illness and eventual suicide in 1999. Her plays - she only wrote five - became increasingly less structured and conventional (although not by any means less powerful or critically-regarded) as she got older; Crave, her penultimate work, has no plot, no characters to speak of (four speaking roles are indicated only by initials), and no structure beyond a theme of destructive, obsessive love and the heartache, abuse, misery, murderous passion and sexual perversion that it inspires. The funniest lines in the play were on the order of “I’m not a rapist. I’m a paedophile” or “I’m a much nicer person since I started having an affair”. This is a work that challenges both conventions and performers.
Staging a Kane play requires imagination, skill, powerful performances and willingness to shock the audience. This production did attempt the last, but unfortunately the other elements of this play felt mishandled. Choosing a college bar for the performance space was not ideal; not least because the pillars holding up the ceiling also blocked the audiences’ view.
It was interesting that the actors began the play (even as the audience wandered in) seated around the bar, sometimes on the very sofas that were laid out as audience seating; it made me hope that there might be some interaction, some clever use of the intimate surroundings to unsettle the viewers, to make them consider the tortured, incoherent lives and minds of the characters as uncomfortably close to their own. Unfortunately, apart from a little desultory hair-stroking of some front-row audience members, the “physical contact warning” on the promotional posters was entirely un-necessary. Please understand, it’s not that I particularly wanted to be manhandled by the cast (who were most convincing when screaming, sobbing or relating terrible incidences of abuse in an offhand manner), but a little Artaudian cruelty toward us theatre-goers might have communicated some of the themes of the play.
The text may be incoherent, but that’s no excuse for leaving the audience bewildered, or, worse, disinterested. Lines, scenes and characters that should have been shocking and moving were rendered banal by generally flat performances. In a work about destructive obsession, I don’t expect three acts and a neat denouement, but a sense of rising tension or even a variation in the mood would have been welcome. The cast seemed to mistake raising their voices for raising the tension, and without an atmosphere of realism, of powerful, shocking verity, the despair and desire of the characters became tedious. The climax consisted of turning the lights out and the actors shining a torch on each other’s faces, rather in the manner of a sleepover ghost-story. It wasn’t until the actors filed out that I realised the play had come to a close; any sort of conclusion or catharsis was missing.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a program or cast list, so I can’t single out individual performances; which is a pity because there were short moments of real promise in this production. One soliloquy in particular, a long list of (sometimes sweet, sometimes abusive) desires, gave a nice example of how a little more emotional range would really have energised the production: “I want to buy you a kitten, and know I’ll get jealous when you give it more attention than me” raised a chuckle, which then gave “I want to hurt you before you hurt me” a bit of rare theatrical power.
That’s what really disappointed me about this production: it’s an unusual play and I was really pleased to see it being performed. I wanted to like it but the staging, direction and performances constantly frustrated my efforts.
Staging a Kane play requires imagination, skill, powerful performances and willingness to shock the audience. This production did attempt the last, but unfortunately the other elements of this play felt mishandled. Choosing a college bar for the performance space was not ideal; not least because the pillars holding up the ceiling also blocked the audiences’ view.
It was interesting that the actors began the play (even as the audience wandered in) seated around the bar, sometimes on the very sofas that were laid out as audience seating; it made me hope that there might be some interaction, some clever use of the intimate surroundings to unsettle the viewers, to make them consider the tortured, incoherent lives and minds of the characters as uncomfortably close to their own. Unfortunately, apart from a little desultory hair-stroking of some front-row audience members, the “physical contact warning” on the promotional posters was entirely un-necessary. Please understand, it’s not that I particularly wanted to be manhandled by the cast (who were most convincing when screaming, sobbing or relating terrible incidences of abuse in an offhand manner), but a little Artaudian cruelty toward us theatre-goers might have communicated some of the themes of the play.
The text may be incoherent, but that’s no excuse for leaving the audience bewildered, or, worse, disinterested. Lines, scenes and characters that should have been shocking and moving were rendered banal by generally flat performances. In a work about destructive obsession, I don’t expect three acts and a neat denouement, but a sense of rising tension or even a variation in the mood would have been welcome. The cast seemed to mistake raising their voices for raising the tension, and without an atmosphere of realism, of powerful, shocking verity, the despair and desire of the characters became tedious. The climax consisted of turning the lights out and the actors shining a torch on each other’s faces, rather in the manner of a sleepover ghost-story. It wasn’t until the actors filed out that I realised the play had come to a close; any sort of conclusion or catharsis was missing.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a program or cast list, so I can’t single out individual performances; which is a pity because there were short moments of real promise in this production. One soliloquy in particular, a long list of (sometimes sweet, sometimes abusive) desires, gave a nice example of how a little more emotional range would really have energised the production: “I want to buy you a kitten, and know I’ll get jealous when you give it more attention than me” raised a chuckle, which then gave “I want to hurt you before you hurt me” a bit of rare theatrical power.
That’s what really disappointed me about this production: it’s an unusual play and I was really pleased to see it being performed. I wanted to like it but the staging, direction and performances constantly frustrated my efforts.