It’s nearly three decades since the British playwright Sarah Kane took her own life, at the age of just 28 – but directors are still in thrall to the five shocking plays she left behind. In her lifetime, she was a celebrated but deeply polarising figure in the world of theatre: her debut, Blasted (1995), and her third play, Cleansed (1998) were particularly incendiary, thanks in part to their violence and willingness to explore humanity’s deepest depravity – even as they exposed its most fundamental tenderness.
Now it’s 2026, and the world has (to some extent) caught up with Kane’s brilliance. The latest director to wrestle with her writing is Rebecca Frecknall, spearheading a new staging of Cleansed at north London’s Almeida Theatre. Frecknall is the outgoing associate director at the Almeida, and Cleansed is her last in a run of shows there that included A Streetcar Named Desire (with Paul Mescal), Romeo & Juliet, and The Duchess of Malfi. “It’s interesting,” she tells me, over Zoom. “Cleansed doesn’t have the performance history that a lot of other plays I’ve directed do, and there’s something freeing in that. People have this idea around it, that it’s a brutal play, with a lot of violence in it. There’s a harshness to it. And that’s valid, but it’s a play that’s very much about love, and exploring the limits, possibilities and transcendent capabilities of love and connection.”
