Sarah Kane was much berated for the graphic violence in her plays during her lifetime. But critics beware: if you choose to scold playwrights for too much blood-letting and grotesque acts of human cruelty, you would surely have to condemn the Greeks, the Grand Guignol and Shakespeare, too.
Perhaps it’s the in-yer-face nature of Kane’s gore that offends. Certainly in this 1998 play there is no flinching from horror, which comes through acts of sensational cruelty. “Death isn’t the worst thing they can do to you,” a character reflects, and his words illustrate themselves with the rapes, mutilations and beatings that follow.
