I felt sorry for Sarah Kane when I read the original reviews of her powerful yet controversial and violent debut play “Blasted” at the Royal Court Theatre in early 1995. Howls of shock, derision and horror from the theatre critics who penned their collective disgust, there was this cacophony of condemnation for Kane. Nothing like this seen since The Romans in Britain. I was surprised by Michael Billington (Guardian) who I always had down as someone sensible but he too jumped on the “shocked and disgusted” bandwagon. “I was simply left wondering how such naive tosh managed to scrape past the Royal Court’s normally judicious play-selection committee . . . the reason that the play falls apart is that there is no sense of external reality – who exactly is meant to be fighting whom out on the streets?” Though Billington had the good grace to retract his review later.
My thoughts at the time that even though I hadn’t read the play I did want to see it. I was amazed at this crescendo of stark criticism as it drowned out Kane’s words and what she was actually trying to say. It was a case of let’s ignore that and just concentrate on the gore and violence. The play has much to say about violence against women, rape, warfare, torture and violence. No wonder it shocked the sensibilities of your average respectable theatre critic. Also, haven’t these learned critics read their Greek mythology or Shakespeare (King Lear? Titus Andronicus?). I was living in Bristol at the time and did make a mental note that I had to; a)read the play and; b) see the play. Well, that’s taken me 15 years as Blasted is being revived at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Fifteen years on I read the play too. After that experience of reading the howls of outrage directed at Kane and her debut play, I was kinda interested what she would do next. Therefore I was shocked and saddened when I read she committed suicide back in ’99. She left a number of plays, her legacy, her final one 4.48 Psychosis is seen as a final suicide note as it was finished just before she died. I do wonder what further plays she would have written if she had lived.
I think it is a point worth making as would this play have conjured up so much apoplexy and disgust had been written now? Post-2001? The era known as ‘War on Terror’ where the graphic horrors of war, torture and death penetrate our general consciousness causing us to realise the brutalities, devastation and barbarism of war. Not in my name. Rendition, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Violation, humiliation and the degradation of Iraqis. US soldiers committing acts of torture, rape and violence against Iraqis which was captured in photographs makes me think of the encounter Ian (one of the main characters in Blasted) has with the anywhere soldier who casually and in a matter-of-fact way talks about the torture, rape and murder he has witnessed or has been involved with. He seems detached, and it’s this banality that makes it more shocking….and real. Reading the soldier’s account can be imagined in any war-torn country. Kane would have been well aware of the atrocities and genocide committed in the former Yugoslavia.
Also, 1995 was the year of the Srebrenica massacre where thousands of Bosniaks were tortured, raped and murdered by Serbian forces. I remember the articles in The Guardian, what will always be etched in my mind was the picture of a Bosniak woman hanging from a tree. Many women, it seemed, committed suicide then endure the violence of rape.The soldier in ‘Blasted’ could easily exist in this barbaric hell-on-earth world of Srebenica or any other place. He represents an ‘anywhere’ soldier. The play has a political context as David Greig argues in the introduction of Kane’s Complete Plays (just seeing the word ‘Complete’ is very sad coupled with a ‘what could have been been’), “Her simple premise, that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war, had been critically misunderstood as a childish attempt to shock”.
Kane was misunderstood and thankfully some realised this. I wonder what Kane would have made of this changed political world and how she would have interpreted it. Though we left with her plays.
Btw… I will be seeing ‘Blasted’ in November.
[...] Harpymarx on Blasted: a fierce, violent play that doesn’t fall in love with its own fierceness and violence. [...]
I saw Kane’s work and thought she was unable to weave her view of the world into a story that drew you in. It was a howl of agony that sadly went nowhere. Drama needs more than that.
Wish I had seen Kane’s work before now. I agree that drama needs to be more but I think critics were unfair about her debut work Blasted because the themes were being ignored, and the violence being used as a distraction. So I will be off to the lyric Hammersmith early November to see Blasted.