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By
Neil Dyson
I went
to watch Blasted with an air of uncertainty. The reviews I had read
told of graphic sex scenes and disturbing imagery, and to this end
they had got it right. The play is certainly a far cry from the
last stage production I saw - The Lion King, and is not one to take
the kids to should Saturday's matinee of Finding Nemo be sold out.
There
were parts of Blasted that made the audience freeze, and you could
actually feel the relief spread once a scene had ended as a cool
breeze hit the back of your neck from the sudden resumption of blinking
and breathing from the rows behind. If scenes of extreme sexual
content and cannibalisation shock you then this is certainly not
the play for you. The play demanded an awful lot from its three
actors, with whom you could wholly empathise doing the play day
in, day out. It was exhausting and heart-stopping just watching
them eat, drink, smoke, strip and still find the energy to act.
Yet
Blasted had more levels than a rather tall building. At the traditional
post-show pub deconstruction, it became evident that different people
had taken many different things from the play. Putting aside the
physical aspects, there were numerous and complex messages being
portrayed. The relationship between the play's couple, Ian and Cate,
was both complex and deep, with ideas of power and control being
explored from both sides. Then we are torn from the hotel room of
the first scene and thrust into a war-torn apocalypse and meet the
third character, 'soldier', fighting for 'them'. His stories of
war brutalities in their most extreme forms were just as shocking
as the physical graphic scenes, being at once both sickening yet
thought provoking. These are not the sort of stories that appear
on 成人快手 News 24 to accompany Michael Fish and the weather; they are
real, and the play's author, Sarah Kane, tries to bring this to
light by forcing the audience to deal with it at face value. Nothing
is watered-down to suit the suits; it simply is as it is.
You
are left in reflection upon Blasted wondering what moral outweighs
another, and what actions justify others. Is there room for the
world's brutal realities in our western oasis where Simba always
beats Scar in the traditional fight between good and evil? This
is a gritty, intellectual, dark story that will have you in thought
for days, and will be made all the more moving to hear that it's
author, the acclaimed Sarah Kane, took her own life in 1999.
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