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Blasted
By Sarah Kane
Theatre North
Customs House, South Shields, and touring
Review by Peter Lathan (2007)
In the twelve years since its first performance at the Royal
Court's Theatre Upstairs, many of the incidents in the play,
dismissed at the time by critics like the Mail's Jack Tinker as
being nothing but a childish attempt to shock, no longer hit us with
the force that they did then but nonetheless the play retains its
power to horrify with its bleak portrayal of humanity.
Indeed, now that the shock has faded, twelve years on is a good
time re-evaluate Kane's first play. Beyond the bleakness of her
vision, which sees the seeds of the atrocities of Vietnam, Bosnia,
Kosovo, Lebanon, Iraq, Ruanda and many another conflict throughout
the world in a Leeds hotel room, we can now recognise her
contribution to dramatic form: the alienation effect of speaking the
stage directions as they are performed; the collapsing of time and
space; the use of increasingly short scenes and images in the second
half when the naturalism of the first gives way to a kaleidoscope of
images of man's inhumanity to man; the references to King Lear
and the Bible; the way in which sexual politics and realpolitik
converge; the faint flickerings of some hope for mankind in the
gentleness of Cate to Ian at the very end.
The power to offend is much diminished but the power to move the
emotions and make us confront the evil inside is enhanced. Watching
Blasted is a cathartic experience, for pity and fear are very
much to the fore.
Theatre North's production, more simply staged than some (Thomas
Ostermeier's Berliner Schaubühne production - Zerbombt -
which Philip Fisher
reviewed at the Barbican last year, for example), concentrates
our attention on the performances and the cast (director Martin
Lewton as Ian, Victoria Bavister as Cate and Ben Matthews as the
Soldier) are utterly convincing.
This was a first for the Customs House: possibly (I can't be
entirely sure of this) the first time the play has been seen in the
North East and very definitely a change in the type of play
presented by the theatre - earlier this week the production was Hull
Truck in Godber's Perfect Pitch. However it is a change which
worked: the largest audience for a play at the venue for a long time
and a whole new audience, drawn from throughout the region.
One minor - but very telling - point, which says an awful lot
about the way our society is going: in a play which presents us with
full frontal nudity and graphic scenes of masturbation, oral sex,
rape, buggery, cannibalism, torture and suicide, the company felt it
necessary to note in the programme that "Cigarettes used in this
production are herbal". Are we so desensitised to horror that the
only thing we need to be reassured about is the non-use of tobacco
in the play? Puh-lease!
Touring to Settle (7th Feb), Aberystwyth (8th
Feb), Norwich (14th Feb), Leeds (20th - 24th Feb) and Lincoln (28th
Feb).
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