BLASTED
Lyric Hammersmith,
London W6
Opened 28 October, 2010
***
I have seen Sarah Kane’s play performed in German, performed by a cast
of disabled actors and even performed in a room in the very Leeds hotel
in which it is supposedly set; however, having missed both its 1995
Royal Court première and the 2001 revival there, I had never
hitherto seen a “straightforward” production. The word needs to be put
into quotation marks when referring to a piece that notoriously
includes epilepsy, cancer, copious masturbation, rape of both sexes,
eyeball-gobbling, infant cannibalism and to all intents and purposes
the modern urban apocalypse. Sean Holmes’ production is comprehensively
committed, but is bizarrely a little too reverent to unleash the play’s
full harrowing power. Especially in the latter stages, short scenes are
divided by lengthy full blackouts behind the safety curtain; this
inescapable awareness of the logistical business of scene-changing
dissipates the effect of the atrocities we are then shown. Suspension
of disbelief cannot be paused and unpaused in an instant like a DVD
recording.
As Cate, the teenage girl who accompanies journalist and soi-disant “killer” Ian to his
hotel room, Lydia Wilson is less obviously “damaged” than I have seen
in previous characterisations. This diminishes the grotesque power
imbalance between them as Ian proceeds to abuse her sexually and
psychologically; Wilson’s Cate both can and does resist him, and never
willingly cedes control. Conversely, this interpretation scores in that
it thereby emphasises Ian’s utter inability even to conceive of being
anything other than the bastard he is, as his sexual and linguistic
violence continue regardless. Danny Webb is a first-rate actor, but
simply cannot carry off a Yorkshire accent plausibly, nor should he
have to: the play is set in Leeds, but Ian is explicitly not local.
Even Aidan Kelly’s Irish accent, as the soldier who bursts into the
room halfway through the play to rape Ian and eat both his full English
breakfast and his eyes, sounds forced: Kelly is Irish, but I have never
before heard one of my southern countrymen call a revolver a “goon”.
Holmes seems to have been determined not to impose any particular
vision on Kane’s play, which is admirable in theory; however, her work
is so ostentatiously anti-naturalistic that it does not just
accommodate such visions but actively demands them. For a play that was
so shockingly audacious only a few years ago, this feels an oddly timid
outing.