Cleansed is the third play by the English playwright Sarah Kane. It was first performed in 1998 at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs in London. The play is set in a university which (according to the blurb of the published script) is operating as "an institution designed to rid society of its undesirables" where "a group of inmates try to save themselves through love" while under the rule of the sadistic Tinker."Cleansed" Literary Encyclopedia When the play premiered at the Royal Court in April 1998, Kane played the part of Grace for the last three performances because of an injury that the original actress suffered.
It is sometimes claimed that Tinker was named after the theatre critic for British newspaper The Daily Mail, Jack Tinker, whose review of Kane's first play Blasted was headlined "this disgusting feast of filth", but there does not appear to be any evidence of Kane confirming this.
Sarah Kane's brother and executor of her estate, Simon Kane, in 2005 remarked that "overseas many, many people think that Cleansed is Sarah's best play."Audio recording of the post-show discussion of the 2005 production of Cleansed at the Arcola theatre. Hosted by Aleks Sierz with discussion from directors Dominic Dromgoole and Sean Holmes, academic Graham Saunders and Sarah Kane's brother Simon Kane.
Synopsis In the first scene, a timid Graham approaches Tinker, who appears to be a drug dealer. He says he 'wants out' and also asks for drugs. Tinker refuses. They then have an argument about whether or not they are friends. Tinker eventually injects Graham with drugs and he overdoses and dies.
Rod and Carl sit in a room together, Carl asks Rod if he can have his ring as a proposal of marriage. Rod initially refuses. Carl promises to always love him, never betray him, and never lie to him. Rod is cynical. Rod claims that Carl does not even know his real name, and states that he would never die for Carl. Carl is not fazed and keeps asking for the ring. Rod surrenders the ring but only says that he loves him now, and does not promise to love him forever. They kiss.
Grace enters the hospital demanding her brother, Graham's, clothes. The dialogue between her and Tinker imply that her twin brother, Graham, has died. Tinker brings Robin in, who is wearing Graham's clothes. The two switch clothing, with Grace wearing her brother's clothes and Robin wearing the dress Grace came in with (Robin was originally written as a man but is sometimes played by a woman). After a psychotic break triggered by her brother's lingering scent, Grace is admitted into the hospital. Grace asks Robin to write her father for her, but Robin reveals he cannot write.
In the next scene, Tinker beats Carl, wanting him to admit that he and Rod are romantically involved. He sodomizes Carl with a long pole, threatening to shove it through his body entirely. Carl gives up Rod's name and apologizes to Rod for it. Tinker then cuts out Carl's tongue and makes him swallow Rod's ring.
Grace has begun to hallucinate her brother. Stage directions and dialogue between them throughout the play imply that they had an incestuous relationship. Haunted by Graham, Grace tries to teach Robin how to read. Robin states his love for her, but Grace rejects him. Tinker comes into the room, tears out the writing in Robin's notebook, and leaves again. He goes and cuts off Carl's hands in front of Rod, who lays there and comforts him.
Tinker goes to see an exotic dancer, known simply as Woman, in a booth. He attempts to masturbate, but gets upset and leaves.
Rod sits in a room with Carl, remorsefully crying. Tinker enters and cuts off Carl's feet.
Robin buys a box of chocolates for Grace, who had mentioned that her previous boyfriend had bought her chocolates. Tinker confiscates the box of chocolates and questions Robin about them, who says they are for Grace. Tinker stands above him and throws chocolates on the ground towards him, demanding that he eats them. Crying, Robin is force-fed the whole box of chocolates.
In the next scene, Rod is crying, still, as Carl crawls up to him. They embrace, and then have sex. Rod vows never to lie to him, never to betray him, and to always love him. Tinker enters the room after they are finished, and slits Rod's throat in front of Carl, who holds him as he dies.
Grace and Robin sit together with Graham looking on. Robin works on counting the number of days in his 30-year sentence. Upset that Grace is not listening, Robin takes off the stockings he has been wearing and ties them around his neck. Grace continues not to pay attention, and Robin hangs himself.
Grace gets a sex change while in the hospital. She arrives onstage with bandages on her groin and breasts. Tinker says she's a lovely man, just like her brother. Carl awakes from the bed behind her, touching his groin. Upon the realization that his genitals were cut off and grafted onto Grace, he starts to cry. Tinker goes and has sex with the Woman, declaring his love for her.
In the final scene, Grace sits on stage with Carl, who is now wearing her dress. She speaks to Graham until she realizes he is not there. She thanks Tinker as Carl begins to cry again. Grace and Carl are alone on stage, when, finally, the sun comes out.
Development
Sarah Kane stated that she "started [writing Cleansed] before Blasted was even staged" and that "it took three years to finish it."
Kane's friend and fellow playwright Mark Ravenhill has said "Kane told me she wrote Cleansed when she was in love" and that the play "[was not] written by a person who knew she would commit suicide."
Kane sent a draft of the script to the playwright Edward Bond. In a letter that Bond sent to Kane in September 1997, he wrote how he suspected that "Cleansed is even more powerful than [Blasted] because it takes any two or three minutes of Blasted and subjects them to great pressure."
According to Kane's agent, Mel Kenyon, The Royal Court theatre "commissioned [Cleansed] quite quickly, although again it took them a long time to put it on – in fact it took them so long they had to renew the rights after twelve months."
Kane claimed that she had written Cleansed specifically as a play that would only work as a piece of theatre and could not be adapted to other dramatic mediums: "I made the deliberate decision to write something that couldn't be film or television. Some people will argue that it can't be theatre either, but I want to stretch the theatrical language. Theatre might not be hip and cool, but at least there isn't any direct censorship, and you're never going to have that with film or TV".
Artistic influences
The play was partly inspired by Roland Barthes' work A Lover's Discourse. Kane commented that "There's a point in A Lover's Discourse when he says the situation of a rejected lover is not unlike the situation of a prisoner in Dachau. And when I read it I was just appalled and thought how can he possibly suggest the pain of love is as bad as that. But then the more I thought about it I thought actually I do know what he is saying. It's about the loss of self. And when you lose yourself where do you go? There's nowhere to go, it's actually a kind of madness. And thinking about it I made the connection with Cleansed."
Kane claimed that she based the structure of Cleansed on the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner. She also directed a production of Woyzeck at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill in 1997.
Other inspirations include Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, August Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata, Franz Kafka's The Trial and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Grace's line directed at Graham "Love me or kill me" is taken from John Ford's tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. The line is said in Ford's play by the characters Bologna and Annabella who, like Grace and Graham in Cleansed, are siblings that are engaged in an incestuous relationship with each other.
Abandoned 'war' trilogy
At one point Kane planned for Cleansed to form the second part of a loose trilogy on the subject of war, with the first part being Blasted. Kane explained in a 1997 interview that "The link between [Blasted and Cleansed] is thematic rather than narrative for the simple reason that everyone at the end of Blasted is dead. [Cleansed is] a completely different play in every way. The trilogy will eventually amount to three responses to war." However, she then said to the interviewer "I've changed my mind about what the trilogy is about just in that second. They are not about war at all but about faith, hope and love in the context of war […] Blasted is about hope. Cleansed is about love. Scrap the bit before the war. It's suddenly become clear to me."
It was originally thought that the final part of this supposed trilogy was incomplete due to Kane's untimely death in 1999. However, according to Simon Kane (who is Sarah's brother and the executor of her estate) she only wrote "a very rough first draft" of the third play under the working title of "Viva Death" but she "abandoned the idea" as she thought it had too many similarities to her previous work and "she didn't want to repeat herself". Another reason why Viva Death might have been abandoned is because, according to Nils Tabert who was the German translator of Cleansed, Sarah Kane had purposely moved away from creating representations of violence when she wrote her next play Crave: "she called from Edinburgh at some stage saying 'I'm past violence – I'm really sick of it. It's becoming like Trainspotting with film – so marketable and boring and I don't want to deal with it anymore.'"
Staging
Stage directions
The play is notable for its many difficult to achieve stage directions which have been described as "impossible". Examples include: "Tinker produces a large pair of scissors and cuts off Carl's tongue" (Scene Four). "A sunflower bursts through the floor and grows above their heads" (Scene Six). "The rats carry Carl's feet away" (Scene Fourteen).
Sarah Kane said "There's a Jacobean play with the stage direction 'Her spirit rises from her body and walks away, leaving her body behind.' Anyway, Shakespeare has a bear running across the stage in A Winter's Tale, and his stage craft was perfect".
Sarah Kane's friend and fellow playwright, David Greig, wrote about the play's stage directions in his introduction to Sarah Kane: Complete Plays: "Theatrically, Cleansed is a daring challenge. It's physicalisation of lyrical imagery raises the same question that dogs Kane's first three plays: how do-able are they? […] This is a question that goes to the heart of Kane's writing. Every one of her plays asks the director to make radical staging decisions […] In a Kane play the author makes demands but she does not make solutions. Kane believed passionately that if it was possible to imagine something, it was possible to represent it. By demanding an interventionist and radical approach from her directors she was forcing them to go the limits of their theatrical imagination, forcing them into poetic and expressionistic solutions. […] With Cleansed, Kane wrote a play which demanded that its staging be as poetic as its writing."
Director of the 2016 National Theatre production of the play, Katie Mitchell, has said "Kane's stage directions request literal violence […] A tongue is cut off with a pair of scissors. Hands are cut off. So how do you do that in a way that is not symbolic?"
Sarah Kane's performance as Grace
Towards the end of the production's run actress Suzan Sylvester was unable to perform as Grace due to being injured. Subsequently, two performances of the play were cancelled but the last three performances went ahead with Sarah Kane portraying the role of Grace instead.
Actor Daniel Evans, who played Robin, said that Sylvester "injured her back during one of the flying sequences". However, Sarah Kane and director James MacDonald claimed the injury was a result of Sylvester trying to pull her dog off another dog.
Kane explained: