Sarah Kane's Violent CLEANSED at National Theatre Prompts Faintings and Walk-Outs

British playwright Sarah Kane, who committed suicide in 1999 at age 28, has had only one significant New York production, a posthumous mounting of her premiere piece, BLASTED, which shocked audiences with its scenes of sexual violence.

While BLASTED and subsequent plays such as PHAEDRA'S LOVE and 4.48 PSYCHOSIS, were generally not highly regarded in her home country, her work has gained international popularity through the years.

CLEANSED, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1998, is set in a university that resembles a concentration camp's torture chamber and, as reported in The Guardian, a new National Theatre production directed by Katie Mitchell has seen forty walk-outs and five cases of audience members fainting during the first six performances

"There isn't a big tradition of putting the violence of atrocity on stage in Britain," says Mitchell. "We're afraid of that dark female voice that insists we examine pornography and violence. We just don't feel comfortable being asked to do those things, particularly by a woman."

The play features characters being electrocuted, force-fed and tortured, including the removal of one character's tongue.

The director admits the production had taken its toll on the cast, who all had "very strange nightmares where very extreme events take place.' She notes, "We have to laugh a lot in order to balance the despair and the darkness of the material."

While admirers have expressed approval on social media, time doesn't seemed to have changed the critical reception to Kane. The Daily Mail gave it just one star, accusing it of gratuitous violence, while the Guardian's theatre critic, Michael Billington, said: "For all the play's visceral power, it left me feeling drained rather than shocked into new awareness."

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The video offers a brief overview of Sarah Kane's life and work.