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Playwrights => Sarah Kane discussion => Topic started by: listings on July 27, 2010, 11:39:58 PM

Title: Blasted in London
Post by: listings on July 27, 2010, 11:39:58 PM
A revival of Blasted in London in October and November 2010.  Current details are here
www.iainfisher.com/kane/eng/sarah-kane-news.html (http://www.iainfisher.com/kane/eng/sarah-kane-news.html)

More details soon.
Title: Re: Blasted in London
Post by: jk86 on October 27, 2010, 12:03:19 AM
An interesting review of the first performance can be viewed here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/oct/24/sarah-kane-blasted (http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/oct/24/sarah-kane-blasted) .

The discussions are also pretty interesting: Kane is still dividing opinion fifteen years later.
Title: Re: Blasted in London
Post by: Iain Fisher on November 02, 2010, 05:41:16 PM
The BBC on the production

In the free first preview for residents of Hammersmith and Fulham [the part of London where the theatre is situated], 40 people walked out. "But 450 didn't," notes director Holmes.

The director Sean Holmes says of the play "It's deeply considered and theatrically bold and intellectually rigorous, and she knew absolutely what she was doing. I really think it is one of the best plays I've ever worked on, and I've done Arthur Miller and Edward Bond and Chekhov and Shakespeare... Historically, it's often the important plays that are greeted in that way, whether it's Look Back In Anger or Saved."

Holmes got to know Kane through doing a show in Edinburgh in 1991.  "She was a student at Bristol University and I'd just left York... It was a really intense experience because the show changed every day. We were rehearsing in a bedroom. It was an extraordinary time and we became firm friends as a result."

Holmes recalls Kane as "a really funny person... "The play is dark and difficult but it's full of laughter. She's playing with the audience. The absurdity of human beings is central to the play...Sarah was fiercely intelligent, amazingly well-read, and knowledgeable in terms of theatre, and all that is synthesized within the play."

The link is here
www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11666136 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11666136)
Title: Re: Blasted in London
Post by: malmo58 on November 14, 2010, 12:20:24 AM
Saw it today. Sean Holmes brings a different and very effective staging to the play. The opening scenes are staged in a quality hotel room filling up a wide stage, with the bed as the focal point and a well-stocked minibar to the side. Then after the bomb goes off, all the fixtures and fittings disappear and the rest of the action is played out in darkness, around the bed, isolated against a backdrop of bare wooden joists, several of them damaged. Danny Webb portrays Ian as he should be played, haggard, dishevelled, his sardonic Yorkshire accent ravaged by alcoholism and lung disease. Lydia Wilson is a very convincing Cate, getting her fits spot on, and Aidan Kelly is suitably aggressive and crazed as the Soldier - with a hint of Irish accent. There's a couple of moments where Ian goes full-on naked but it fits in with the plot. The rape scene succeeds in being handled both realistically and tastefully - and, just beforehand, Ian and the Soldier are portrayed as almost being about to bond, before they fall out, setting up the denouement. A production that does the play full justice.

On my way out, one of the two young ladies in front of me said to her friend "The next time my brother calls me a big girl for not watching Saw..."
Title: Re: Blasted in London
Post by: jimmynitcher on November 24, 2010, 11:52:55 AM
I am a little surprised there aren't more reactions to the play here and the ones there are are very restrained!

I thought it was one of the best things I've seen at the theatre full stop, it was superbly staged, sound design, lighting, set, direction, but above all the acting of Danny Webb, he was a colossus at the heart of it, perfect timing and a brave, honest performance as I've seen on stage.

It has haunted me ever since, I'm glad I was there, it was full of A level students the night I was there (its now a set text!) it was a pity most nights were only half full (apparently), maybe it's just indicative of the 'safe entertainment' times we live in now.