tiredandspice's review
2.0
I've seen lots of reviews of Sarah Kane's work that write her off as someone simply seeking shocks and publicity and setting out to be as gross/gory as possible. For her other plays, I vehemently disagree. But this one just felt like a good concept that got overshadowed by the gore it needed to work. The ideas and themes are present- and fascinating- but her mechanisms for showing them only damaged their strength, rather than demonstrate them
Felt very meh overall, you could totally skip this one from the Kane canon.
Felt very meh overall, you could totally skip this one from the Kane canon.
recriminator's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Violence, Murder, Sexual violence, Addiction, Blood, Gore, Incest, Injury/injury detail, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Death, Drug use, Rape, Sexual content, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Homophobia
spacestationtrustfund's review
4.0
Sarah Kane was inspired to write Cleansed (so the story goes) after stumbling across a line from Roland Barthes in which he said that "being in love was like being in Auschwitz." Well, Kane certainly took that line and ran with it.
I'm a bit at a loss as to how to review this one (as if I don't say that every time I go to review something of Kane's!), because it's my least favourite of her plays, yet was the most stunningly horrific and beautiful to see live. Kane's plays may read like poetry, but she was a visual poet: the stage performances of her plays are so far removed from what reading the two-dimensional product can achieve that it almost feels unfair to consider the two one and the same. Reading about horrific acts of human cruelty is one thing, but seeing it happening (more or less convincingly) before your very eyes is another thing entirely. I've had this vague idea for around a decade now about how I'd stage a performance of Hamlet if I ever got the chance—the trick is that Hamlet can see the audience the whole time, but no one else can, so his trick of madness involves speaking to an "invisible" person or persons; the audience watches, and Hamlet grows increasingly bitter at how you, the audience, can watch his entire life falling apart and do nothing to intervene, to stop it, to help—well, I won't spoil the ending of what my idea is, but Sarah Kane's plays all feel like a natural extension of that concept. Whether or not the characters can see right through the fourth wall and into the audience, passively observing these horrors taking place onstage, is hardly relevant when what makes Kane's theses so powerful is that they demand to be witnessed. In Blasted, this is perhaps most obvious: Kane forces the audience to witness a brutal act of rape, forcing us watch a girl's life being ruined, while we the audience do nothing about it—choose to do nothing about it.
On the surface level Cleansed is an unending series of graphic onscreen scenes of torture inflicted on university students under the vague guise of being some sort of academic study performed by a "doctor," scare quotes intentional. (There are very strong elements of Beckett in Kane's work, and in this play specifically.) Kane apparently based some of her specific details of torture on events which occurred during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and it's impossible for me not to connect this with the various harrowing medical experiments done on unwilling—and often unknowing—humans in the name of scientific progress. The Tuskegee experiment comes to mind. Nazi twin studies. Unit 731. Project Artichoke. Solitary confinement. The list goes on. And Kane had reason to distrust doctors (although most, with the exception of a handful of mad scientists here and there, will probably not do this kind of thing): her own suicide is thought to be made possible in no small part because the psychiatric hospital in which she was staying at the time of her death was not adequately staffed and did not perform frequent enough checks on patients to ensure they weren't in danger. Of course, this also invites the question of the right to death, and whether or not it's ethical to prevent someone from dying if they so wish—is that not, in its own way, another form of medical experimentation on an unwilling subject?
I first thought the title referred to the process of sterilising medical instruments before surgery. But it could also refer to ethnic cleansing, baptism or other religious rituals, redemption, a simple soap-and-water metaphor, or the cleansing heat of flame which, as Kane herself put it, burns books yet produces a beautiful fire.
I'm a bit at a loss as to how to review this one (as if I don't say that every time I go to review something of Kane's!), because it's my least favourite of her plays, yet was the most stunningly horrific and beautiful to see live. Kane's plays may read like poetry, but she was a visual poet: the stage performances of her plays are so far removed from what reading the two-dimensional product can achieve that it almost feels unfair to consider the two one and the same. Reading about horrific acts of human cruelty is one thing, but seeing it happening (more or less convincingly) before your very eyes is another thing entirely. I've had this vague idea for around a decade now about how I'd stage a performance of Hamlet if I ever got the chance—the trick is that Hamlet can see the audience the whole time, but no one else can, so his trick of madness involves speaking to an "invisible" person or persons; the audience watches, and Hamlet grows increasingly bitter at how you, the audience, can watch his entire life falling apart and do nothing to intervene, to stop it, to help—well, I won't spoil the ending of what my idea is, but Sarah Kane's plays all feel like a natural extension of that concept. Whether or not the characters can see right through the fourth wall and into the audience, passively observing these horrors taking place onstage, is hardly relevant when what makes Kane's theses so powerful is that they demand to be witnessed. In Blasted, this is perhaps most obvious: Kane forces the audience to witness a brutal act of rape, forcing us watch a girl's life being ruined, while we the audience do nothing about it—choose to do nothing about it.
On the surface level Cleansed is an unending series of graphic onscreen scenes of torture inflicted on university students under the vague guise of being some sort of academic study performed by a "doctor," scare quotes intentional. (There are very strong elements of Beckett in Kane's work, and in this play specifically.) Kane apparently based some of her specific details of torture on events which occurred during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and it's impossible for me not to connect this with the various harrowing medical experiments done on unwilling—and often unknowing—humans in the name of scientific progress. The Tuskegee experiment comes to mind. Nazi twin studies. Unit 731. Project Artichoke. Solitary confinement. The list goes on. And Kane had reason to distrust doctors (although most, with the exception of a handful of mad scientists here and there, will probably not do this kind of thing): her own suicide is thought to be made possible in no small part because the psychiatric hospital in which she was staying at the time of her death was not adequately staffed and did not perform frequent enough checks on patients to ensure they weren't in danger. Of course, this also invites the question of the right to death, and whether or not it's ethical to prevent someone from dying if they so wish—is that not, in its own way, another form of medical experimentation on an unwilling subject?
I first thought the title referred to the process of sterilising medical instruments before surgery. But it could also refer to ethnic cleansing, baptism or other religious rituals, redemption, a simple soap-and-water metaphor, or the cleansing heat of flame which, as Kane herself put it, burns books yet produces a beautiful fire.
phantomthreads's review
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
anniemlx's review
challenging
dark
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
0.5
It gets 0.5 stars for being theatrically innovative but oh god was this traumatizing to read. I would not recommend this to anyone to be honest. It was just weird
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Violence, and Sexual content
Moderate: Drug use
cathrinerogne's review
4.0
This book is really freaking good! Though I'm not sure why I land on four stars... it might just be because I have given every book in the last, I don't know, month(?) four stars... Oh, well.. I liked it, it's a bit crazy, but then again, so am I........
avlain's review
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
onigirihands's review
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
i just. i don’t know how to feel i think reading sarah kane’s work is actually fucking me up what is this
lydj's review
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Sexual violence, and Violence