CLEANSED

CLEANSED. By Sarah Kane. Directed by Benedict Andrews. Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin. 23 May 2005.

With all five of Sarah Kane's theatrical works in the company's repertory as of May 2005, the Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz, one of Berlin's most prolific theatre companies, has clearly established its position in the world of theatre as the "House of Sarah Kane." Equally as controversial as her infamous play Blasted, Cleansed opened 28 March 2004 at the Schaubuhne.

With Cleansed, Kane dramatizes a microcosm of a society under the power of an unrestrained dictator, a God-like figure named Tinker who maintains control of a former university campus turned into an "institution." Tinker judges and carries out sentences on the inhabitants of his world: Graham, who dies of a heroin overdose in the first scene and remains in the action of the play as a ghostly presence; Grace, Graham's sister, who comes to the institution to retrieve his body; Rod and Carl, a homosexual couple deeply in love; an unnamed female dancer; and Robin, a weak, ineffectual boy. The plot is loosely based on, among other sources, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, as Grace seeks her (apparently) dead brother, becomes trapped in Tinker's dark world, and eventually decides to become her brother by changing her sex, allowing Tinker to sever her breasts and give her a phalloplasty of Carl's extracted genitalia. Each of the characters is tested by Tinker, who observes them, ascertains their innermost desires and, with strict Orwellian justice, "cleanses" them. According to interviews with the playwright, Kane wrote Cleansed to explore the survival of human love in the midst of violence and devastation.

The real success of the production, however, resided in the tremendous flexibility and...