Imagine a play that critics call immoral and obscene, but which artists defend with equal ferocity. Audiences rally around the work, turning the introverted writer into a celebrity. Lesser playwrights ape the play's violence; greater ones find inspiration in its creative audacity. It sparks a bona fide theatrical movement. Some critics come around, hailing the piece as a modern masterpiece. Now imagine that more than a decade passes before this celebrated, divisive play reaches New York.
That's only a glimpse of the story behind “Blasted,” one of most acclaimed plays of the 1990s. Premiering in 1995, this radical work by rookie playwright Sarah Kane launched the “In-Yer-Face” movement: raw, confrontational dramas about sex, drugs and sociopathy (remember the film adaptation of “Closer” with Julia Roberts and Jude Law?). But because of Kane's untimely suicide in 1999 and an over-protective estate, only now is “Blasted” getting its Gotham premiere.
It's fitting that the show is being produced by the small and scrappy Soho Rep (actually located in Tribeca). A larger company like the Public or New York Theater Workshop might share the Rep's edgy artistic sensibility, but their higher stature would add a gloss of establishment sanction. Soho Rep, in their support of unconventional work, has an underdog's sensibility. Under ex-artistic director Daniel Aukin and now his replacement Sarah Benson, Soho Rep is devoted to cultivating new talent. They're risk-takers in an era when the competition finds safety in audience-tested authors.
There's nothing safe about “Blasted”. Audiences get frustrated quickly, especially when they see the realistic anonymity of a hotel room in northern England. They're conditioned to expect the tightly-wound psychology of a chamber drama. So they don't know how to react to a lead character who's a caustic, gin-guzzling, middle-aged racist who berates, manipulates and eventually rapes his former lover, herself a mentally damaged, unemployed twentysomething. See now why critics were confused?
Kane, however, keeps subverting expectations. In a surreal twist, a foreign soldier breaks into the hotel room and proceeds to humiliate, abuse, rape and blind the anti-hero. Soon, even the play's own structure unravels. Scenes get shorter and shorter, till they climax with the main character's death—and yet, in the next scene, he's alive once more. “Blasted” leaves realism far behind for Beckett-style absurdism.
This second section of “Blasted” tests the sensibility of the most jaded theatergoer. Under every civilized human, Kane implies, lies a desperate barbarian. In interviews, the playwright drew a connection between her play and the Bosnian civil war. “Blasted” is a European's reaction to the return of conflict after 50 years of cold warfare. But it's more than a visceral response to a specific historical moment, a formal experiment in subverting expectations, or even a juvenile attempt to outrage audiences. Kane sees a link between domestic violence with military brutality. After the terrorist attacks on New York and the moral morass in Iraq, Americans are recognizing the depths of human depravity in ourselves, as well as others. Maybe we needed the extra time to accept the horrifying truth of Sarah Kane's vision. Thanks to Soho Rep, we have the opportunity to find out.
Photo by Simon Kane
