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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113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
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.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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