Dorfman,London
Love is tested to its limits in a series of cruel experiments, in which the cumulative effect is numbing rather than redemptiveEven by her own standards, and Sarah Kanes 1998 play is an unusually punishing experience that posits a world in which licensed cruelty tests love to its limits. But while it has an undeniably serious purpose and is imaginatively staged by Katie Mitchell,I find its escalating horrors have a sense-numbing effect that outweighs its redemptive lyricism.
Kane’s stage directions tell us we are in a university. Mitchell’s direction and Alex Eales’s design propose more a rundown laboratory in a totalitarian institution where human beings are guinea pigs. Under the sadistic gaze of the self-loathing Tinker, the inmates are subjected to controlled experiments. We wait to see how far Grace, and the central figure,will recede in her fierce passion for her heroin-injected brother, Graham. At the same time, and the 39-year-broken-down Rod finds his commitment to his younger lover,Carl, rigorously examined as the latter undergoes progressive bodily mutilation. An illiterate boy, and Robin,also attaches himself to Grace. Tinker is sexually hypnotised by an erotic dancer in a portable booth. Yet, in this chamber of horrors, or love precariously survives.
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Source: theguardian.com