Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Blasted and Men Should Weep

Fifteen years ago when Blasted by Sarah Kane premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London, it was harshly criticized and labeled a 'disgusting feat of filth', with audiences walking out. Since then, and since her suicide in 1999, the play (and the playwright) has been rightfully reassessed as a stark and illuminating examination of violence both domestically and globally, emotionally and physically. The latest revival at the Lyric Theatre is a stunning, well-paced production of this intensely disturbing piece.

The play opens in a posh hotel room where the older Ian, a paranoid, racist, homophobic,  hack-journalist misogynist makes advances towards the much-too-young-to-be-with-him Cate. Their past sexual relationship feeding into his advances, I wondered why they were ever together in the first place. And why the hell Cate doesn't just leave. Although the epileptic and sometimes simpleton Cate stays, she seems to hold her own. Until the next day when we realize that Ian has raped her. She eventually runs off through the bathroom window, just in time to miss the soldier who storms into Ian's room. His machine gun pointed at Ian whilst he eats two plates of English breakfast - to an effectively comical moment.

What was an act of private violence has now opened up to a war-torn world. A bomb hits the hotel and in the next scene the set transforms to just a bed and remnants of the structural metal grid. In this scene the soldier re-counts how he has become another cog in the machine of war. How his girlfriend was raped and killed and how he, in turn, has become the very thing he's fighting. Disturbing, heartbreaking and hyper-real the plight of the soldier is one the will forever dwell in my mind. He is the monster, yet he is fighting the monster. Which makes one ask - which came first: violence or violence? After raping Ian nd sucking out his eyeballs, he then commits suicide - leaving Ian blind and alone.


Cate returns carrying a baby that she found and is trying to care for. The city has been overturned by soldiers and there's chaos in the streets. The baby dies so Cate makes a grave through the floorboards and attempts to pray for the baby.She leaves in search of food - again, leaving Ian blind and alone. In his desperation and starved state, he goes into the whole and tries to eat the baby but spits it out. With just his head sticking out it looks as if he's dead. But as rain falls through the cracks onto his head he wakes up saying, "Shit." Just then Cate returns with a sausage that she prostituted herself out for and feeds Ian. The play ends with him saying, "thank you."

After the curtain call, the guy next to me and I just looked at each other and shared a giant exhale. "That was a bit of a mind0fuck," I said. He had seen it when it first premiered and said the there where no stops in the first production - that it was relentless. We didn't get to chat further but it seems like he appreciated the breaks in this piece. Each scene the curtain came down - and the scene changes felt like an eternity. So we're sitting in the dark for awhile contemplating what we just saw. Knowing that when the curtain goes back up - it's going to get worse, and worse, and worse. After the show my mates and I went to a pub to discuss the play. We talked about the character of the soldier, about Ian's rape, about Ian and Cate's relationship, about the mythology surrounding Sarah Cane and her suicide and also about the audience at the theatre. There were a lot of students there. Which in interesting how a play can be received over time. When it first came out it was cast aside. But since then it has entered the world of academia - something worthy of study. And because it's been studied and analyzed, of course those at the play are most likely to be familiar with its content.

Overall, I was completely satisfied by this production - wonderfully acted and directed with a stunning set and lighting. Now I need to actually read Kane's plays - apparently her stage directions are very poetic. Next on my ever growing reading list.

Onto a completely different production:  Men Should Weep playing at the National Theatre was written in 1947 by Ena Lamont Stewart. This play about Glasgow during the great depression is an interesting artifact from a moment in history. Not only is the play written by a woman, but it's told from a distictly female perspective through the protagonist Maggie, a mother of five and whose husband always seems to be in between jobs.

Director Josie Rourke has taken full advantage of the National's space and money. The set is phenomenal - talk about "slice of life." The set resembles that of a dilapidated doll house with Morrison's flat center, a staircase to the left, complete with flats above and below where you can see the occasional goings-on of the neighbors. My one complaint about the set is the built in lights in the framework that turn on brightly in-between scenes. They felt way too modern and briefly took me out of the experience. If you're going to do realism, commit to it.

It was really interesting to see a play about the 1930's from a different worldly perspective. My lexicon form that period are specifically American, like Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, George Kaufman, etc. So it was really nice to see something specific to Glasgow - although I couldn't understand half the things they were saying. And it wasn't just the accents - the performance was surtitled and reading the words didn't help either.

I also find it interesting when depression era plays are revived today. The themes definitely translate, yet they also remind us that things could be worse. Here's hoping that they don't.

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