Review: Cleansed, Almeida Theatre

I’m not normally one for content warnings. I don’t have any particular triggers, and I’ll usually prefer to go into a piece of work and allow it to unfold. Cleansed is a rare exception to that, and I cannot stress enough that anyone going to see this should begin with the Almeida’s well-thought-out content warnings and care guide. 

Supposedly set in a university, director Rebecca Frecknall leans into ambiguity here; the set (designed by Madeleine Girling) appears prison- or institution-like. Grey and drab with doors that very clearly lock. This is a deliberately symbolic choice that looks towards the torture to come. What follows is a fever dream of abuse. The inmates – it seems the most appropriate word – in this institution are brutally and sadistically beaten and abused by Tinker, played by Leo Bill. Tinker is not really a single figure but an amalgamation of anyone who might have power over the inmate: doctor, prison governor – or torturer. Tinker is the personification of the question Cleansed poses: Can love survive faced with totally abject cruelty? 

Trapped in Tinker’s world are a handful of damaged souls. Grace (Pearl Chanda) is searching for her dead brother, Graham (Jack Riddiford), but becomes lost and increasingly consumed by Graham’s identity. Carl (Luke Cinque-White) and Rod (Parth Thakerar) are lovers whose devotion is tested to unimaginable extremes, while Robin (Stuart Thompson) is a lonely, vulnerable young man desperate for acceptance. Together they become subjects in Tinker’s twisted experiments forced to the very edge of love and endurance.   

The remarkable thing about Frecknall’s production, aside from the performances which must be quite something to do night in and night out, is that despite the graphic, unrelenting violence, it just manages to veer away from becoming an endurance test for the audience. There is a fragile, very fragile, humanity in Sarah Kane’s writing under all its layers of brutality. Much of the violence is stylised, with movement direction playing a huge part in the effect. There is no one on stage beating up Carl at one point, for example. Cinque-White throws himself around and bashes his head off a wall as if held by two guards. 

Then, alongside the brutality, there are moments of tenderness; Carl and Rod’s love for each other and Robin’s lost, almost sweet innocence (beautifully played by Thompson) help ground us, interrupting the almost constant horror. These tiny moments, the touch and the connection, become more important until they become almost everything – a reason to survive, a reason to go on. This idea is perfectly underscored by a singular transformation of the set, a moment of startling beauty and colour in a dark world of pain. 

There are reports of walkouts and of audiences viscerally reacting through the show. There is certainly no question that the violence, the play and its staging are deliberately shocking. For me, the question then becomes, is there meaning beyond this shock? I’d suggest that there is, and that Frecknall finds Kane’s thread of hope and carefully nourishes it.  The violence is extreme, and, for some, it will undoubtedly be too much. But Frecknall understands that the violence is not the point; it is the backdrop to Kane’s exploration of the fragile persistence of love and connection. Cleansed is by no means easy viewing, but it is an evening that goes beyond the shock of the content warnings. They can prepare you a bit for what you will see but not explain the reasons why. 

Writer: Sarah Kane
Director: Rebecca Frecknall
Set Designer: Madeleine Girling
Costume Designer: Debbie Duru
Lighting Designer: Lee Curran
Sound Designer: George Dennis
Composer: Angus MacRae
Intimacy Director: Ingrid Mackinnon

Cleansed runs at The Almeida Theatre until Saturday 29 August