There were more walkouts than I’ve ever seen in a theatre from this gruelling, gripping orgy of cruelty. But as one survivor put it after the stunned curtain call: “If you come to a Sarah Kane play, what do you expect?”
The writer, who hanged herself aged 28 in 1999, was a singular dramatic voice, unusually attuned to the horrors humans can perpetrate and endure. In the first three of her five plays – Blasted, Phaedra’s Love and Cleansed – this manifested in stark depictions of violence, rape and torture. Rebecca Frecknall’s revival of Cleansed is certainly a hard watch, but it impeccably done.
