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Crave
is the work of English play write Sarah Kane. Ever
controversial, Kane's first play 'Blasted' featured
scenes of cannibalism and male and female rape. Its
London debut in 1995 saw it being dismissed by critics as
"a disgusting feast of filth." Kane went on to
write 4 more plays before, age 28, she hung herself in
hospital in London in February 1999. Reflecting the troubled mind of its author, Crave is an incredibly emotional and demanding piece of theatre. The audience is taken inside the minds of four characters who are crumbling under the pressures of love, loss and desire. |
Set against the
stark black background of the Axis Theatre in New York's
Greenwich Village, the characters are illuminated by harsh white
light when speaking. This uncompromising setting mirrors the raw,
cutting dialogue that offers no respite and no place to hide.
Television monitors allow us to look through the window into the
characters lives as they discuss their paranoia and neurosis.
The characters speak at times completely disparate of each other,
at other times supportive and questioning of each other, and
again at times seeming to act as different aspects of each other's
personality - polar opposites whose words and thoughts act as the
male and female sides of one entity.
'C' (Kristin Dispaltro) is a girl who is tortured by the death of
her mother, she fears for her own death but at the same time
longs for its release.
'A' (Brian Barnhart) is a man who fears loneliness and wants so
much to give himself and to be received.
'M' (Deborah Harry) is the older woman who longs for a child, who
is afraid that her life is slipping away and is afraid of growing
old alone and unloved.
Character 'B' (David Guion) is not so clearly defined, but
encapsulates the combined anxieties of the other three. He is a
man who fears commitment but also fears loneliness. Above all is
a numbness, a catatonic state of existing through life and rarely
feeling anything at all.
The theme of family is raised again and again, from the knowledge
and experience passed on from parent to child, even while still
in the womb, to the later rejection and disgust of family members
to the point where any contact with them is repulsive.
The appearance of Deborah's character is majestic and mature. She
balances between being an almost maternal figure to the younger
characters, questioning and soothing their worries, while also
expressing depression, panic and insecurity of her own.
The most moving monologue is also the least bleak, providing the
only relief from the darkness of the rest of the play...
character A describes his feelings of adoration for an un-introduced
woman. The woman has enriched his life and fills his every waking
moment, she is everything to him and he aches and longs for her,
only to find torture in the fact that he is unable to relate his
feelings and the woman ultimately leaves feeling rejected.
The play ends as sharply as it begins. Through the exorcism of
demons there is no attempt at finding resolution, there is
nothing more then the knowledge that somehow the suffering must
end. "This has to stop, this has to stop."