Review: Cleansed (Almeida Theatre)

Review by Daz Gale

⭐️⭐️

If there is one collaboration that is certain to excite me, it is the continued relationship between Rebecca Frecknall and the Almeida Theatre. Over the past few years and during her tenure as Associate Director at the Almeida, she has directed outstanding new productions of Romeo and Juliet, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and the sensational Streetcar Named Desire with the latter enjoying transfers to the West End and New York. Frecknall’s latest collaboration sees her revive Sarah Kane’s Cleansed for a bold and daring new production, but could this match the highs of her previous productions, or would it fail to leave its mark?

Cleansed debuted at London’s Royal Court in 1998, and was last seen in London with a revival at National Theatre ten years ago. Set in an institution where a group of inmates find themselves tortured in an attempt to save themselves through love, the play explores the brutality of desire and asks what happens to love when there’s nothing else worth living.

I have to be honest - I didn’t get any of that through watching Cleansed myself. When you leave a play confused and need to read up to fill in the gaps, it hasn’t done its job properly and that is exactly what happened to me this time around. Kane’s writing struggled to paint the picture of what exactly was happening, with the setting and reasoning for the extreme actions taking place all extremely ambiguous. My understanding from reading up on past productions of Cleansed is that was not the intent, so something has clearly been lost along the way.

Sarah Kane’s work has always been defiant and uncompromising, which is admirable in itself. It also means her style can prove divisive - there are those who love what she wrote in her selection of plays through her tragically short life, and those that struggle. Sadly, I find myself falling into the latter. Having not been completely won over by 4.48 Psychosis last year, I was keen to see whether I would have more luck with Cleansed, particularly as this has been described as Kane’s standout play. Disappointingly, I found myself having an even more extreme reaction this time around - while I certainly appreciated elements of the play, the actual writing failed to capture me.

I have always said I would much rather feel anything whatsoever, even if it was a negative feeling as opposed to feeling nothing, so I admire the attempt in Cleansed to strike up the most extreme reactions in its audience members. However, the whole thing felt completely unnecessary. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the most disturbing and unsettling piece of theatre I have ever seen, with many scenes making me uncomfortable. I have heard stories of audience members passing out and walking out in past productions, and it isn’t hard to see why. I found myself willing for the play to end as I found the whole thing far too uncomfortable. Now, that’s not to say theatre should always be comfortable, but there needs to be a rhyme and reason for why certain scenarios are playing out. I found no such answers in Cleansed - instead, it seemed like a series of vignettes designed to torture not just the poor characters but the audience itself, and what for? If there is a message in Sarah Kane’s writing, it has been well and truly lost in this production. I found myself writing down the words “Torture porn”, “sick” and “f***ed up”during the course of the play in the hopes there would be some payoff to redeem it all, but that never came. Instead we are left with 100 minutes straight through of a play that attempts to push the boundaries for no apparent reason whatsoever.

While I may not be a fan of Sarah Kane’s writing, I consider myself a huge fan of Rebecca Frecknall’s direction, and there were certainly moments of her genius to be found in Cleansed. However, I found myself so at odds with Kane’s writing that it became much harder to separate that from Frecknall’s direction and decipher why I had such an extreme and negative response to this play. That isn’t to say there aren’t strengths to be found here, with Madeleine Girling’s initially harsh set design paving way to an unexpected reveal, Lee Curran’s lighting used to strong effect and a strong use of movement delivering a hint of what can usually be expected with Frecknall at the helm. In a deeply intimate production, Ingrid Mackinnon’s intimacy direction is crucial in its execution, and utilised to full effect, giving a much needed sense of safety for the actors when they are in the most vulnerable of states.

While Cleansed may not have resonated with me, I can’t fault the hard work of the actors at all, who all have unenviable and exhausting roles to play through not just the emotional stakes, but the physicality required too. Luke Cinque-White is the receiver of most of the torture as Carl, still managing to captivate even when grotesque aspects had me desperate to look away. Pearl Chanda is a dominant force as Grace, with Stuart Thompson delivering a knockout performance as Robin, bringing a sense of sweetness and naivety to a desperately harsh world. Leo Bill was perfectly menacing and sinister as Tinker, though the tone did start to waiver in his performance at times, with one or two moments where he couldn’t be taken as seriously as he ought to have.

Do I seriously think Cleansed is a two-star show? In all honesty, probably not. However, I can only write about my personal experience, and that means I am unable to give it anything more than that, with the caveat that I know full well there are some who are going to come out of this production absolutely spellbound by what they have seen. For me, though Frecknall’s direction still had some moments of glory and there were certainly some standout performances among the exceptional cast, I just can’t get past Sarah Kane’s writing. Kane may have been a tortured genius, but her style just doesn’t resonate with me in the way it does others, and I found Cleansed to be deeply unnecessary and unpleasant to watch. I have no problem being uncomfortable in a theatre due to the show’s content, but when I am always conscious of the time and counting down for the show to end, that is a problem that cannot be overlooked. Sadly, Cleansed was not a pleasant experience for me, though I am sure others will have wildly different takes on it and, after all, that is the beauty of theatre. If theatre can be subjective, Cleansed is the perfect example of that - I admire the intent, boldness and execution of the play but ultimately it just wasn’t for me.

Cleansed is at Almeida Theatre until 29th August. Tickets from https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/cleansed/

Photos by Marc Brenner