Writer: Sarah Kane
Director: Rebecca Frecknall
One thing you can be sure of when watching a Sarah Kane play is that it will not be a comfortable viewing experience. Cleansed is the apotheosis of that, with a list of content warnings far longer than most: Kane’s work includes nudity, violence, sex, incest, more violence, bodily mutilations, suicide, drug abuse, amputation and lots of blood.
The cruelty on display is visible from the opening scene, where Leo Bill’s Tinker – a drug dealer and, it seems, ruler of an institution founded upon sadism – plunges a syringe of drugs into the eye of Jack Riddiford’s Graham. Later, as Graham’s sister Grace (Pearl Chanda) arrives to try and reclaim her now-dead brother’s body, she elects to stay, stripping the resident of her brother’s clothes and donning them herself. Plagued by visions of her brother, she sees her sibling relationship flicker with affection but becomes much more twisted and psychosexual. Although is it really incest if one half of the duo is already dead?
There are moments of sweetness: our introduction to Luke Cinque-White and Parth Thakerar’s gay couple shows a pair at the start of a journey to lifelong companionship, while Stuart Thompson carries an air of lovable charm as the naïve Robin, who takes a shine to Grace.
But those moments are generally there to make the brutality that follows all the more sour. Cinque-White, in particular, is subjected to multiple levels of abuse. He is beaten up by invisible guards in a prolonged sequence that illustrates the actor’s physical ability as he hurls himself around, before being raped with a metal pole by Tinker and having his tongue cut out. Later, his hands and feet are amputated – simulated on stage by binding his hands and feet into stumps and dousing them in copious amounts of blood.
Quite what the reasons for all the violence are is not really explored. Each scene becomes a query not of why Tinker is so malevolent, but more a wonderment of what punishment may be meted out next. It feels as if both Kane and director Rebecca Frecknall (in her final production at the Almeida before moving, with Rupert Goold, to the Old Vic) are more interested in what can be portrayed on stage, pushing the boundaries of theatrical gore at the expense of emotional clarity.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the piece is Madeleine Girling’s set. Initially presented as a utilitarian plywood hospital ward with a corridor behind it, the half-wall between the two spaces is used to (almost comically) disguise some of the blood packs and viscera used in the fight sequences. Later on, it moves backwards to reveal another layer, a suggestion of an idyllic space outside the confines of Tinker’s abusive hellhole: a mental refuge from reality, perhaps, or a daffodil-strewn afterlife.
The presence of such beauty in front of acts of extreme violence may be hoped to provide some contrast, helping to contextualise everything that is happening. Sadly, it does not help. Kane is, of course, no longer with us to help us understand what her work is actually about, and it’s not readily apparent if Frecknall has a clear idea herself of what Cleansed is. The strands of humanity, especially from Thompson and Cinque-White, suggest optimism even at the basest levels of despair.
This may have been a cry of pain by Kane, whose own experience with extreme mental ill health and institutionalisation is articulated both more clearly and more abstractly in 4:48 Psychosis. Frecknall’s Almeida swansong lacks some of the coherence of her earlier work for the venue. That ensures that, for all its ultra-violence, this production of Cleansed ultimately pulls its punches.
Runs until 29 August 2026
