In the quarter-century since her shocking death, playwright Sarah Kane’s works have entered the modern canon – taught in classrooms, and almost always in production somewhere around the world. She’s recognized as the most significant British stage writer to emerge from the 1990s.
My play, look away from me, which will open Tarragon Theatre’s Play Reading Week in Toronto on June 10, is a love letter to Kane, a figure who so subtly haunts this country’s theatrical identity.
But, at the time of their premiere, Kane’s violent, sexually charged plays were often ripped to shreds in reviews by the British press.
Kane’s debut play Blasted, an incendiary critique of British tabloid culture and the Bosnian War, is infamous for its initial critical reception. Reviewers in 1995 called the Royal Court’s production of the play “a disgusting feast of filth,” positing that the money spent on producing the play might have been better spent on therapy for Kane.
The play was also dismissed as a publicity stunt because of its depictions of sexual assault, cannibalism and other horrors. Today, however, the play is lauded as a modern classic, heralded for its coarse portraits of wartime violence, made all the more impressive by Kane’s 23 years of age at the time of the play’s premiere.
Reviews of Kane’s work stayed sour for the bulk of her career, focusing mainly on her refusal to adhere to common standards of taste and decorum. Phaedra’s Love, an adaptation of Racine’s Phaedra, critiqued the British monarchy, offering a protagonist who bore a strong resemblance to Diana, Princess of Wales.
Cleansed, structurally based on Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, experimented with sexual violence and themes of queer identity. Crave and 4.48 Psychosis rounded off Kane’s playwriting career with poetry, eliminating character names and settings for a new type of playwriting that scholars soon coined “postdramatic.”
The Guardian called 4.48 Psychosis “a 75-minute suicide note;” The Independent referred to Kane as “a very angry young woman” in its review of Blasted.
Kane took her own life in 1999, leaving behind five plays and a screenplay.
But her work has outlived those nasty reviews. The Canadian theatre landscape is no stranger to Kane, who in the years after her death has amassed a cult following of devoted fans.
Toronto playwright Cliff Cardinal, one of the foremost theatrical provocateurs of our time, has cited her as a major influence on his work; she’s quoted in his Governor-General’s Award-winning As You Like It, a radical retelling. A handful of Kane plays have been produced in and around Toronto, including a 2010 production of Blasted at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
“Theatre has no memory, which makes it the most existential of the arts,” Cardinal said at the Factory Theatre this fall, quoting Kane ahead of a reading of a new play by fellow monologuist Daniel MacIvor.
“No doubt that is why I keep coming back, in the hope that someone in a dark room somewhere will show me an image that burns itself into my mind, leaving a mark more permanent than the moment itself.”
Contemporary Canadian playwrights refer to her often: Governor-General’s Award-winning playwright Jordan Tannahill mentioned Kane as a reference when creating his 2012 play Feral Child. Crow’s Theatre’s 2023 production of Bad Roads earned numerous Kane comparisons in reviews. The Globe’s own J. Kelly Nestruck wrote that a blistering 2022 production of Is God Is by Aleshea Harris was evocative of Kane’s work.
There’s a hunger in the Canadian theatre community for provocative, politically resonant work. Kane is remembered for her tenacity and bravery as a writer – qualities embodied by many contemporary dramatists. Will every new play that follows in Kane’s daring footsteps be adored by critics and subscribers? No, probably not. But there seems to be an industry-wide yen for meatier, grimier and less crowd-pleasing onstage work.
And there’s room to learn from how Kane was treated by the critics of her time. Sure, no contemporary Canadian critic is likely to call a new play “a disgusting feast of filth.” But today’s critical landscape poses its own questions worth careful consideration: How should newspapers and critics engage with requests by racialized artists who have asked to be reviewed by BIPOC critics? And how should reviews grapple with objectivity – should they acknowledge the lived experience of the critic and how that might have influenced their perception of a given show?
I don’t have answers to these questions. As a critic, I have long grappled with the legacy of Sarah Kane.
When Kane died, she left an imprint more vibrant than could be seen in her lifetime. She left an echo that continues to ring throughout this country’s theatres – a mark more permanent than the moment itself.