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Έλεος & Φαίδρας Έρως
Τον Ιανουάριο του 1995 έκανε πρεμιέρα το Blasted, το πρώτο θεατρικό έργο κανονικής διάρκειας της Σάρα Κέην, στο Θέατρο Royal Court. Προκάλεσε σάλο και αποτέλεσε το μεγαλύτερο θεατρικό γεγονός της χρονιάς, ξεσηκώνοντας κριτικούς και θεατές με την ωμότητα που η συγγραφέας χειρίστηκε θέματα όπως ο βιασμός, τα βασανιστήρια, και η βία του εμφυλίου πολέμου.
"Μέχρι χτες πίστευα ότι δεν υπάρχει θεατρικό έργο που να μπορεί να με σοκάρει. Αποδείχτηκε πως έκανα λάθος"
Εφημερίδα Daily Mail
"(...) στυγνή και απροκάλυπτη βία"
Εφημερίδα Evening Standard
(...) Το Phaedra's Love, είναι μια ριζοσπαστική διασκευή της κλασικής τραγωδίας του Σενέκα, με θέμα την αιμομιξία και το ανεκπλήρωτο πάθος.
"Καθαρό θέατρο. Ή καλύτερα ¨α-κάθαρτο¨ θέατρο: βρώμικο, ανησυχητικό, επικίνδυνο"
Εφημερίδα Observer
"(...) είναι μια γροθιά στο στομάχι, πασπαλισμένη με μαύρο χιούμορ"
Εφημερίδα Financial Times
"Μέχρι χτες πίστευα ότι δεν υπάρχει θεατρικό έργο που να μπορεί να με σοκάρει. Αποδείχτηκε πως έκανα λάθος"
Εφημερίδα Daily Mail
"(...) στυγνή και απροκάλυπτη βία"
Εφημερίδα Evening Standard
(...) Το Phaedra's Love, είναι μια ριζοσπαστική διασκευή της κλασικής τραγωδίας του Σενέκα, με θέμα την αιμομιξία και το ανεκπλήρωτο πάθος.
"Καθαρό θέατρο. Ή καλύτερα ¨α-κάθαρτο¨ θέατρο: βρώμικο, ανησυχητικό, επικίνδυνο"
Εφημερίδα Observer
"(...) είναι μια γροθιά στο στομάχι, πασπαλισμένη με μαύρο χιούμορ"
Εφημερίδα Financial Times
202 pages, Paperback
First published December 25, 1996
79 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Kane
34 books734 followersSarah Kane was an English playwright. Her plays deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture—both physical and psychological—and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form, and, in her earlier work, the use of stylized violent stage action. Kane battled with depression, and her life was brought to a premature end when she committed suicide at London's King's College Hospital. Her published work consists of five plays and one short film, Skin.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 24, 2015
Edit – Revival of Blasted on right now in Cardiff. I wish I could see it. The Guardian's review – ‘it’s sometimes as much as you can do to look at the stage’ – has lots of interesting links on the play's impact.
(Feb 2015)
––––––––––––––––
There have been three great scandals in post-war English theatre. The first was Edward Bond's Saved (1965), which features a baby being stoned to death on stage; the second was Howard Brenton's The Romans In Britain (1980), the first on-stage depiction of homosexual intercourse. Sarah Kane's Blasted was the third, and probably the most shocking of them all.
It premiered in 1995; I read it a couple of years later and although I was admittedly fairly young and impressionable, I still remember how numb and dazed I felt for about a week afterwards. A few months after that, in February 1999, newspapers reported that Sarah Kane had taken a deliberate overdose of prescription drugs. She was rushed to hospital in London and revived, but a few days later she managed to sneak away from her nurses' supervision and hanged herself with her shoelaces. She was 28.
Since then, it has become common to ascribe the extremes of her work to her troubled state of mind. Although there is certainly some truth in this, works like Blasted are in no way just therapeutic purging. She was a technically brilliant writer, and all her work shows a very incisive use of the theatre space and the possibilities of stagecraft – this is what makes her so powerful and so hard to ignore.
Blasted was her first full-length play, and the setting is a northern English town after society has broken down into civil war. As is usual with civil wars, this entails torture, sexual violence, rape, cannibalism and other brutality and Kane holds nothing back in putting across a certain form of horror with a particular kind of bleakly efficient scripting.
People have misinterpreted the obscenity of the play as deliberately far-fetched, a series of grotesqueries manufactured for shock value. Such people need to read more about Bosnia, or Rwanda. The brilliance of the play is precisely to make this stuff real by transposing it to Leeds.
There are only three characters – Cate, Ian and an unnamed Soldier. Most of the scenes are dialogues between two of them. The stage directions are astonishing in what they ask of the actors.
It is a play that shows human beings in their last resort, naked and shitting in fear, lashing out not because they are ‘evil’ or perverted but because they are utterly heartbroken and desperate.
I can feel that lick of despair in my stomach just remembering how some of this plays out. Although. And yet. It is not completely without all hope, either – indeed Caryl Churchill famously called the play ‘rather tender’.
Nevertheless, reviewers staggered out of the first production at the Royal Court white-faced in disbelief, and most followed the general line set by Jack Tinker in the Daily Mail:
Although he misses the whole point of the play, I like his opening: ‘Until last night I thought I was immune from shock in any theatre. I am not.’ As it happens, once people started to recover from the initial impact of the play, its qualities gradually became clearer, and by the time Kane committed suicide it was already being acknowledged by a lot of critics as something uniquely impressive. A revival in 2001 brought more understanding and admiring critical notices.
I've never seen it staged, and I'm not entirely sure I'd like to. Actually this is a difficult play to rate, because even if you admire it it's hard to feel affection towards it.
But once seen (or read), it's never forgotten, and it has loomed up in my mind many times since I first encountered it – both while covering conflict zones myself, and also just at home when reading the newspapers or listening to politicians. Blasted is out there, waiting for us. It stands for what we need to avoid at all costs.
(Nov 2014)
(Feb 2015)
––––––––––––––––
There have been three great scandals in post-war English theatre. The first was Edward Bond's Saved (1965), which features a baby being stoned to death on stage; the second was Howard Brenton's The Romans In Britain (1980), the first on-stage depiction of homosexual intercourse. Sarah Kane's Blasted was the third, and probably the most shocking of them all.
It premiered in 1995; I read it a couple of years later and although I was admittedly fairly young and impressionable, I still remember how numb and dazed I felt for about a week afterwards. A few months after that, in February 1999, newspapers reported that Sarah Kane had taken a deliberate overdose of prescription drugs. She was rushed to hospital in London and revived, but a few days later she managed to sneak away from her nurses' supervision and hanged herself with her shoelaces. She was 28.
Since then, it has become common to ascribe the extremes of her work to her troubled state of mind. Although there is certainly some truth in this, works like Blasted are in no way just therapeutic purging. She was a technically brilliant writer, and all her work shows a very incisive use of the theatre space and the possibilities of stagecraft – this is what makes her so powerful and so hard to ignore.
Blasted was her first full-length play, and the setting is a northern English town after society has broken down into civil war. As is usual with civil wars, this entails torture, sexual violence, rape, cannibalism and other brutality and Kane holds nothing back in putting across a certain form of horror with a particular kind of bleakly efficient scripting.
People have misinterpreted the obscenity of the play as deliberately far-fetched, a series of grotesqueries manufactured for shock value. Such people need to read more about Bosnia, or Rwanda. The brilliance of the play is precisely to make this stuff real by transposing it to Leeds.
There are only three characters – Cate, Ian and an unnamed Soldier. Most of the scenes are dialogues between two of them. The stage directions are astonishing in what they ask of the actors.
It is a play that shows human beings in their last resort, naked and shitting in fear, lashing out not because they are ‘evil’ or perverted but because they are utterly heartbroken and desperate.
I can feel that lick of despair in my stomach just remembering how some of this plays out. Although. And yet. It is not completely without all hope, either – indeed Caryl Churchill famously called the play ‘rather tender’.
Nevertheless, reviewers staggered out of the first production at the Royal Court white-faced in disbelief, and most followed the general line set by Jack Tinker in the Daily Mail:
Although he misses the whole point of the play, I like his opening: ‘Until last night I thought I was immune from shock in any theatre. I am not.’ As it happens, once people started to recover from the initial impact of the play, its qualities gradually became clearer, and by the time Kane committed suicide it was already being acknowledged by a lot of critics as something uniquely impressive. A revival in 2001 brought more understanding and admiring critical notices.
I've never seen it staged, and I'm not entirely sure I'd like to. Actually this is a difficult play to rate, because even if you admire it it's hard to feel affection towards it.
But once seen (or read), it's never forgotten, and it has loomed up in my mind many times since I first encountered it – both while covering conflict zones myself, and also just at home when reading the newspapers or listening to politicians. Blasted is out there, waiting for us. It stands for what we need to avoid at all costs.
(Nov 2014)
March 20, 2013
You ask me, Blasted is a masterpiece and Sarah Kane was the modern day Georg Buchner. I picked this up again last night to take a quick look at the style and couldn't put it down till I'd finished. The language is sparse, intense, brutal, as blasted as the city of Leeds in the play's post-apocalyptic latter half. Yes, the shift from England-as-we-know-it to England-at-war could have been smoother (it would only have needed a line or two early on to suggest the possibility of invasion), but thematically the connections are clear. Rape during wartime or rape in suburbia, Kane's grasp of sexual politics and insensitivity is acute. Here's Ian, middle-class middle-aged journalist/rapist with a smoker's cough from hell, phoning in a story from his posh hotel room while his young would-be lover looks on:
That Ian ends this phone call with a laugh and a reference to a 'scouse tart' is in character, and when later he tells a soldier he can't write about his experience because it's not 'a story anyone wants to hear', quoting from a newspaper about a 'kinky car dealer' who kidnapped a 13 year old prostitute and whipped and raped her to illustrate his point, his cynicism is shocking and exquisite, yet not at all exaggerated.
Sarah Kane was young when she wrote this - early twenties - and her text is sometimes too forceful or unsubtle as the work of the young can be. It's like punk rock, or post-punk, all spiky and angular, but with a hyper-concision that could only have come from serious heartfelt dedication. From the moment these characters walk on stage we know them, and can only watch fascinated as they unravel.
Phaedra's Love (her 'comedy') is excellent too, though I'm not game to reread it just now, so soon after Blasted.
Sarah Kane died at age 27 by her own hand.
A serial killer slaughtered British tourist Samantha Scrace in a sick murder ritual comma, police revealed yesterday point new par. The bubbly nineteen-year-old from Leeds was among seven victims found buried in identical triangular tombs in an isolated New Zealand forest point new par. Each had been stabbed more than twenty times and placed face down comma, hands bound behind their backs point new par. Caps up, ashes at the site showed the maniac had stayed to cook a meal, caps down point new par. Samantha comma, a beautiful redhead with dreams of becoming a model comma, was on the trip of a lifetime after finishing her A levels last year point. Samantha's heartbroken mum said yesterday colon quoting, we pray the police will come up with something dash, anything comma, soon point still quoting. The sooner this lunatic is brought to justice the better point end quote new par. The Foreign Office warned tourists down under to take extra care point. A spokesman said colon quoting, common sense is the best rule point end quote, copy ends.
That Ian ends this phone call with a laugh and a reference to a 'scouse tart' is in character, and when later he tells a soldier he can't write about his experience because it's not 'a story anyone wants to hear', quoting from a newspaper about a 'kinky car dealer' who kidnapped a 13 year old prostitute and whipped and raped her to illustrate his point, his cynicism is shocking and exquisite, yet not at all exaggerated.
Sarah Kane was young when she wrote this - early twenties - and her text is sometimes too forceful or unsubtle as the work of the young can be. It's like punk rock, or post-punk, all spiky and angular, but with a hyper-concision that could only have come from serious heartfelt dedication. From the moment these characters walk on stage we know them, and can only watch fascinated as they unravel.
Phaedra's Love (her 'comedy') is excellent too, though I'm not game to reread it just now, so soon after Blasted.
Sarah Kane died at age 27 by her own hand.
October 11, 2015
When a newspaper like The Daily Mail pans you so repulsively, you already have me on your side, especially when the review begins with a line so golden as, "Blasted is a prime example of how the Left elevates ugliness." But, Jesus Christ, it's ugly. I am being genuine when I say that a baby dies and that's the least of it. That is absolutely the least shocking and disturbing thing that happens in this play. There are moments of absolutely beautiful dialogue, like the moment where Ian abruptly changes his mind after Cate leaves, or Cate's description of the baby and her burial for it, and Ian's suicide attempt. However, there are also three pages which ask for us to watch pure degradation and brutality in a sneering Human Centipede kind of, "Can you handle this yet?" For instance, we are asked to watch Ian:
- masturbating as he says "cunt cunt cunt cunt" over and over
- shitting
- huddling into the dead body of his rapist for warmth
- eating the dead baby
....all this after he's been raped by a soldier and had both his eyes sucked out and eaten. Are you going to tell me that war is ugly? Rape is ugly? I know war and rape are ugly. I don't mind being shown that war and rape are ugly, but I expect something a little more delicate or insightful or interesting than "how many ways can we degrade and agonise one actor in a very very short play." There are moments of deep piercing truth of war, pain, fear, and humiliation, but also they all come from the dialogue. There's a reason for this.
- masturbating as he says "cunt cunt cunt cunt" over and over
- shitting
- huddling into the dead body of his rapist for warmth
- eating the dead baby
....all this after he's been raped by a soldier and had both his eyes sucked out and eaten. Are you going to tell me that war is ugly? Rape is ugly? I know war and rape are ugly. I don't mind being shown that war and rape are ugly, but I expect something a little more delicate or insightful or interesting than "how many ways can we degrade and agonise one actor in a very very short play." There are moments of deep piercing truth of war, pain, fear, and humiliation, but also they all come from the dialogue. There's a reason for this.
Read
August 21, 2020Blasted:
I can't help but rave about this? When I picked up Sarah Kane, I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I definitely Blasted as a complex masterpiece rather than an attempt to shock. Her style is quite modern but assured and grounded which helps the reader make sense of it.
Phaedra's Love:
I liked it a little less than Blasted, maybe because it is a reworking rather than an original concept? I felt like the themes were really well addressed but the characters lacked some development and it could've been extended a bit, that's just me though. On the whole I still enjoyed it.
I can't help but rave about this? When I picked up Sarah Kane, I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I definitely Blasted as a complex masterpiece rather than an attempt to shock. Her style is quite modern but assured and grounded which helps the reader make sense of it.
Phaedra's Love:
I liked it a little less than Blasted, maybe because it is a reworking rather than an original concept? I felt like the themes were really well addressed but the characters lacked some development and it could've been extended a bit, that's just me though. On the whole I still enjoyed it.
November 1, 2021
3.5 stars
January 12, 2026
Lectura: Blasted
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews