One of the strongest women writers that lived, she revolutionized theatre and her death was unfortunate robbed theatre of her potential. A Great collection of her complete work at a great price. Cleansed was my favorite in the collection. Her work is so poetic, stark, honest, painful, and brutal.

These are the most electric scripts to arrive in a long while. Sadly, the source was snuffed in 1999. Kane's writing is at once repellent and seductive. "Blasted" is exceptional, riffing on Beckett blatantly, but still signature of a visionary voice: inyerface, exuberant, filthy, poetic, profound. As a debut, it is truly remarkable. "Phaedra's Love" and "Cleansed" push the envelope past the hyper-real into lightning-bright brilliance, and with thunderous emotional depth. How does one stage this stuff? Kane's challenging work sets the imagination--and ultimately, the soul--on fire.

Sarah Kane's plays present the horrors which characterize the world of the late 20th century. The plays contain scenes of incredible brutality. Ordinarily, I avoid violence in books, plays and films but these plays haunt me with the beauty of their generous humanity. Her last two plays--Crave and 4:48 Psychosis are beautiful poems of hopelessness. If you are interested in contemporary theatre, YOU MUST READ SARAH KANE. The story of her life and death, while unspeakably sad, should not overshadow the extraordinary talent of this gifted writer and remarkable human being.

In "Cleansed," somewhat in the old-fashioned manner of the imagist poets of the early 20th century, Sarah Kane chose to eliminate all back story and pare away at narrative presumably to give audiences only "pure" drama. Granting the artist her Pinterish donee, this viewer is still perplexed by the question of how successfully finished a piece for dramatic representation the resultant work is. "Cleansed," whether seen or read, seems to me to come up short on realized meaningfulness. While there's no denying the power of some of the hallucinatory, indeed nightmarishly brutal individual scenes, the absence of audience friendly connectives suggests the author was not so much writing for the stage about the nightmarish as herself caught up in the grip of it, not so much on top of her material as in fact overwhelmed by it.
Oscar Wilde once said that the flip side of brutality - surprisingly enough - is the most mawkish sentimentality. In "Cleansed," Kane oscillates between these two unfortunately reductive poles, offering a vision of the human scene in which symbolic Senecan violence is lamely conjoined with some very tired, indiscriminately "compassionate" representations of salvation through "love." Not surprisingly from this vantage point, even the worst of her characters it turns out is also just a "victim."
The incomparable Eric Bentley saw the great playwrights as thinkers. I don't think, at least in "Cleansed," that the undeniably talented Sarah Kane could justly be called a thinker. In this play, she is operating on a less demanding principle, "I feel; therefore, it is." In "Cleansed," she might best be called the playwright as "feeler."

Although many may be shocked by the violence in this work--and I don't think I've ever read as violent a play--(critics frequently tore her work to pieces), Sarah Kane was not out to shock for shock's sake--she was interested in pushing her characters (and audiences) to their limits.
In "Cleansed" they desperately try to cling some semblance of love. Characters merge, blur, and combine. Many die. All suffer.
Her work is visionary in the best sense of the word--The nightmarish university sticks in my mind in the way most horror films don't.
I don't consider this her best play--Phaedra's Love had more of an emotional impact on me--but it provides a dazzling, maybe blinding introduction to one of the most important British playwrights of the 90s.

This is my favorite play of sarah kane, an incredible playwright who i think would have grown to be an incredible force in theatre. her work is a revolution. this play is beautiful yet tradegic and sickening. Imagine seeing it. it is a visual marvel.

Sarah Kane's drama, 4.48 Psychosis is a dark journey through the life of a mentally ill young woman. With no character names, loose dialogue, and not set the play weaves through internal and external monologues, displaying the pain,loneliness, and saddness that is the life of the mentally ill. This piece is ideal for those looking for an abstract modern play that can be done on a budget.

I have no doubt in my mind, that Sarah Kane's influence will be compared to that of Beckett's, in about twenty or thirty years. Unfortunately, those of us in the United States have had little opportunity to see her works staged, as of yet. Nevertheless, Saunder's book provides a somewhat thorough overview of her works.
The book is divided into two parts. After a brief introduction, there is a discussion of each of her plays, and Saunders traces Kane's journey and development. Common themes are discussed, her movement toward stripping down language to the barest essentials, her reliance on image over the word, her destroying of the boundaries and limitations of theatrical structure, common characteristics of her characters, etc. Most of the time is spent on Blasted!, which I can understand, but I found the insight to be less in-depth on some of my favorite plays, including about a ten page discussion each for both Cleansed and Crave. It leaves one feeling that merely the surface has been scratched. However, new information was introduced, which did add to my enjoyment and understanding of the plays. The second half of the book includes a number of interviews with actors, directors, agents, and such, that had the opportunity to work directly with Kane. This section adds a different perspective from the first, and adds a much more personal approach that books of this sort are usually lacking.
Hopefully, this book will help direct some attention to Kane's work. It seems that we are the only country not invested in her works, and maybe this book will help de-mystify her for American audiences. Maybe this will help get her fellow playwrights some attention as well, such as Mark Ravenhill, Anthony Neilson, and David Greig. This book marks a positive step toward understanding the work of someone who innovated and challenged so much, that we will only fully comprehend her impact in the distant future. Its worth the read, and applause for Saunders for taking this crucial step.

They tell me that Sarah Kane made quite a stir in British theatre before her untimely suicide in 1999. Given the undeniable intensity of "Blasted," not to mention the in-your-face subject matter, it's not difficult to see why. I think Kane had at least some talent, but the modest technical skill she brings to this play is definitely overwhelmed by the unpleasantness of the material. Really, "Blasted" is just that old Theatre of the Absurd shtick--you know: "The world is a crazy, horrible place but it's all we have"--updated for somewhat more permissive 1990's audiences; no one familiar with the best plays of Beckett, Pinter, or Stoppard should be terribly impressed by it. The companion piece, "Phaedra's Love," is more of the same, only lacking the questionable merits of the first play. In fact, "Phaedra's Love" is flat-out awful, strongly suggesting that Kane had really very little to say. But that's often how it goes with would-be rebels in the arts.

Sarah Kane's work has been subjected to every manner of uncomprehending ignorance possible. What has been overlooked - and what this collection shows - is her handling of form, structure and Classical unities ("Blasted" is almost an exercise in symmetry). Ignore the vindictive, poorly spelled review from Colorado, try and ignore the appalling sentiment of the final line. Sarah Kane's work is outstanding. There is more of it than just these two plays, but not as much as there should have been

These, the first two plays by Sarah Kane, the most brilliantly original voice of 1990s theatre, are essential. Blasted captures the full horror of contemporary war and socks home scalpel-sharp observations about life, abuse of all kinds and extreme despair, yet finds some compassion amid it all. Phaedra's Love is a majestic macabre comedy, a re-working of the Greek tragedy of Phaedra, yet again with serious points to make about obsessive love, extreme boredom and hypocrisy.

Sarah's work will live on for centuries, both through performances of her own plays and through the new writers influenced by her who are already emerging.

I met Sarah twice, and she was a very lovely lady, so may you die horribly, Colorado, you scum.