Cleansed by Sarah Kane, The Almeida, Almeida Street, Islington, London | until 29 August 2026 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Cleansed

by Sarah Kane

The Almeida, Almeida Street, Islington, London | until 29 August 2026

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell

“A harrowing experience.”

Let’s get it over straight away – those stars are for a fine cast delivering very good performances and director Rebecca Frecknell for a production that is about as good as it gets. As for the play, well Sarak Kane, who committed suicide aged 29, is highly regarded for the handful of plays she created but whether that regard is deserved is another matter. As a paying customer I might have left at the interval, except there was no interval as it runs straight through with every sort of depravity and violence imaginable occurs almost in one's lap. It was apparently set in a university by Kane although it could be any institution in which the inmates are subjected to violence of the most extreme sort by the man who runs it, in this case a middle aged man called Tinker who, whatever he may be, insists he is not a doctor, some of them spend a lot of time banging their heads against a corridor wall and the blood flows all over the place as hands are mutilated, tongues cut out, and people are beaten, injected with something or other and reduced to quivering heaps of flesh. The intimacy director clearly had a whale of a time as the cast bury themselves in pretty well every private place you can think of. As a portrait of a society in decline, one destroying itself, it is certainly powerful and the violence is no more than one sees in any horror movie, except that instead of being safely confined on a screen it’s happening there front of one to people one can almost touch. A young woman turns up seeking her dead brother's belongings and wants to wear his clothes, except they have been given to another inmate who is promptly stripped. Two young men in love discuss the exchanging of rings and the impossibility of love, a woman appears for no reason at all except to be abused, while Tinker goes about his business attacking all the inmates and crushing any signs of rebellion. Given what we happily watch on a screen in the safety of a cinema or one's living room it is a tribute to both writer and director that this is a genuinely harrowing experience and not one you wish away by dispatching a pound or two to some charity. Kane did have concerns about the cruelties in the world, and she wanted to express them through the theatre. It is possible there could be even more harrowing stagings of the play than this, but it is still very hard to take even although there is always that lurking knowledge that if this were a matinee it will happen all over again in an hour or two, that the gore will wash off and there are replacement clothes for all. That said it is production and cast who are the reasons for see it – for once the play is not the thing.

Cast

Lee Bill – Tinker

Pearl Chanda – Grace

Luke Cinque-White – Carl

Lizzy Connolly – Woman

Jack Riddiford – Graham

Parth Thakerar – Rod

Stuart Thompson – Robin

Creatives

Director – Rebecca Fracknell

Set Designer – Madeleine Girling

Costume Designer – Debbie Duru

Lighting Designer – Lee Curran

Sound Designer – George Dennis

Composer – Angus MacRae

Intimacy Director – Ingrid Mackinnon

Illusions – Chris Fisher

Prosthetics & Special Effects Makeup Designer -Susanna Peretz

Fight Director – Sam Lyon-Behan