Blasted: Distasteful and Offensive

It’s been over a week since I saw Sarah Kane’s Blasted, and I am still highly disturbed. Rape and cannibalism taboos ceaselessly invade my mind, making me think twice before reaching for that chicken sandwich at Sainsbury’s. I disliked the play and the messages of despair and suffering that it promoted. While leaving the Lyric Hammersmith, I felt reviled and sick to my stomach, cursing Kane and her “creative genius.” Never in my life would I have paid to watch such graphic displays of human desperation. I don’t like being shocked, I don’t enjoy watching people suffer, and I can’t fathom how anyone would classify the play’s distasteful analysis of human anguish as entertainment.

I recognize that In-Yer-Face theatre is supposed to engage the audience in emotions too strong to be conveyed by conventional means, but Blasted went too far. I The sound of retching behind me is a major indication that the play overstepped its boundaries. Any experience that involves vomit is an unpleasant one – and this play is no exception. Kane’s inclusion of Ian eating the dead baby was unnecessarily gruesome. The rape scene was unbearably long and the soldier’s monologue about his previous rape stories could have been omitted. Without these nonessentials the storyline would have remained intact - admittedly less shocking - but nonetheless more virtuous by my standards.

I find myself searching for Kane’s motivation behind writing such a dark play. I can only presume that her battle with mental illness was what drove her to such extremes.  Sara Kane clearly suffered from severe depression and possibly psychosis. Confused and disturbed thoughts, feelings of hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, and intolerance of others are all symptoms of depression that appear within the storyline of Blasted. In the first scene alone I witnessed dialogue about sex, rape, suicide, and death. I cannot help but wonder if Kane felt these themes as intensely as her storyline suggests and if this play is her way of letting others get inside of her head.

Ian’s character disgusted me. He displayed his hyper-sexualized, slightly deranged, and unstable tendencies towards Cate, who was so young and innocent. His coughing fits and mentions of imminent death stirred no sympathy for me as I watched him guzzle down gin and suck cigarettes. The mounting hatred I felt for Ian is, however, an indication of Danny Webb’s tremendous portrayal . Lydia Wilson’s performance was great as well, expertly imitating the stammering and fainting of an unbalanced narcoleptic. I enjoyed Cate’s character, especially her sweet and ignorant disposition. She knew Ian was a bad person but still stuck around, providing him company and eventually nutrition and human compassion

I was disappointed in the storyline and it’s lack of resolution. It could have benefited from a better ending than Ian just sitting miserably in a hole. The plot line was too simple for me and I kept waiting for more actors to enter the story or for the scene to shift. I could not bring myself to feel sympathy towards Ian’s self-deprecating character. I grew bored and agitated watching him flail around, cry, and defecate. Kane relied too heavily on shock factor to entertain her audience and left out a resolution that I was so desperately seeking. However, I was grateful that Cate got away unscathed, for my moral consciousness appeased some of the horrors with this small bit of happy news.

In all, the only way I can justify seeing this play is so that I will know to steer clear of anything relating to it’s genre ever again. I could not appreciate Kane’s artistic vision because I was too busy trying not to vomit and/or faint. She crossed the line of decency  and entered vile and ridiculously disgusting territory. 

-Taylor Austin