Blasted by Sarah Kane (1995)
Theatre | Drama: In Yer Face
Blurb:
“Blasted is Sarah Kane’s first full-length play which opened in 1995 and was the sensation of that year’s theatre season, making front-page headlines and outraging some critics who thought her premise that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war was simply an attempt to shock audiences. The questions raised in this play about violence are at the heart of Kane’s writing.”
–Goodreads
pooled ink Review:
I wish I’d never read this play. I could have gone my whole life without ever needing to read this play. Regardless of how I feel aesthetically about this play there remains a horrific but undoubted truth to it. I admire her boldness and her contributions to “In Yer Face theatre” and it speaks volumes to the reality and true deterioration of the human spirit in war. Unlike the play Shopping and F*cking by Mark Ravenhill the shock value and the grotesque is being used to serve a purpose. Kane is using this style to force open the eyes of the comfortably ignorant. But I’m not entirely here to be intellectual so much as I prefer to give honest gut-reaction reviews and so I must end my review by saying it was simply not my thing but I’m sure someone somewhere appreciates her play.
Cheers.
Review originally posted on Goodreads on March 3, 2015
Purchase here: Blasted
Meet Sarah Kane!
Sarah 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’s 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.
–Goodreads
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