Hi there! I followed the discussions on Cleansed with great interest and have some thoughts of my own on the play. I start a new topic, because I don't know if the older threads are still being looked at.
I think the main issue about Grace is that she is in love with Graham and wants to be as close as possible to him, which means becoming one - not becoming Graham. For Graham - he doesn't die in the first scene (Kane would have written "He dies."), he moves to some sort of "other side", a spiritual form of being, maybe. So Grace has to reach the same state of being like Graham has reached, which means to nearly die, loose the own identity in order to become a shared identity with Graham. Kane always said that the violence in "Cleansed" is highly metaphorical, so i think the beating and the rape are means of killing her self. After that she seems completly tranquilized, ghost-like, she even doesn't respond to Robins death, she is sort of "gone". When she sees her stitched on genitals, she is shocked, it seems she doesn't approve to that kind of change, it's not what she wanted. Finally, Tinker and Graham leave her. Is the change completed? The final scene shows her as Grace/Graham. But still she seems alone, although she is "Safe on the other side and here." Calling Graham, the answer ist just a long silence. Is Graham gone, or did they become one? Her last words are "Help me.", she says them to Carl, who is dressed like Grace. Finally they, uhm..., hold hands
, it stops raining and the sun comes out. So in this final image we have a Grace/Graham, holding hands/stumps with a torso-like Carl, dressed as Grace. My thoughts on this are, that Grace and Graham did not become one. She reached the other side, she looks and talks like Graham, but stays alone. One of the most depressing things about extreme love is that you can't get so close to you lover that you become one. And Grace gets very close, but finally it does not work. She holds hands with someone dressed like her, a destroyed and mutilated image of her former self.
Archive 26-3-2002
