in Blasted at the Royal Court 1985
Photo: Tristam Kenton
042 – Blasted, by Sarah Kane
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When Sarah Kane’s first full-length play Blasted premiered in the small upstairs theatre at the Royal Court in 1995 it was greeted by shock and outrage by critics, catapulting its 23-year old author to unexpected and unwelcome tabloid notoriety. Blasted is certainly disturbing, as it features scenes of rape, suicide, blinding and cannibalism, as well as graphic descriptions of atrocities of war.
Kane wrote only four more plays in her short life, all of which are challenging in form and content, featuring extremes of sex and violence, love and cruelty, but also raw honesty, and even glimmers of hope and beauty. In the little more than two decades since she took her own life in 1999 at the age of 28, Kane’s reputation has been defined partly in terms of the myth of the tortured artist, in the mold of Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain, but her work has also found a singular place in the critical canon, distinctive and influential for its innovative form and its brutal vision.
I am joined in this epsiode by someone who is very well qualified to guide us through the blasted landscape of Sarah Kane’s play. Graham Saunders is the author of Love me or Kill me: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes published by Manchester University Press, as well as About Kane: the Playwright and the Work published by Faber, and the editor of Sarah Kane in Context also from Manchester University Press.
Warning: this play and therefore this episode are not for the faint-hearted. Our conversation about the play contains language and scenes that may be disturbing.
Graham Saunders
He has written a number of other books on modern British drama, including Patrick Marber’s Closer (Continuum, 2008) and British Theatre Companies 1980-1994 (Methuen, 2015). He is co-editor of Cool Britannia: Political Theatre in the 1990s (Palgrave, 2008);) and Arnold Wesker: Fragments and Visions (Intellect, 2021). His latest monograph, Elizabethan and Jacobean Reappropriation in Contemorary British Drama: ‘Upstart Crows’ was published by Palgrave in 2017. He is also co-series editor for Routledge’s Modern and Contemporary Dramatists – Stage and Screen.
Graham recommended The Writer by Ella Hickson.
The Footnotes to our episode on Blasted include observations on the sources of the title of the play, and on the writers that infuenced Kane as she wrote it.
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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg
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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.
Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.
Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.
114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.
I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
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