Crave
Crave – Sarah Kane’s penultimate play being shown nightly at the Royal
Court in tandem with 4.48 Psychosis which the theatre first staged
posthumously last year – is like a poem for four voices that are
simultaneously dislocated yet connected to each other. Each of this
haunting pair of one-acters, individually bracing, becomes cumulatively
overwhelming when seen in the context of the other. It is work that is
terrifyingly torn straight from the heart.
They are staged in a completely reconfigured Royal Court that enhances the
sense of dislocation that the plays are about. Crave, first seen at
the Traverse in 1998 as part of the Edinburgh Festival and subsequently
transferring to the Court’s Theatre Upstairs (when it was in residence at
the New Ambassadors), is revived in Vicky Featherstone‘s original Paines
Plough production, but with only Ingrid Craigie remaining from the original
company of four.
Staged with utter simplicity on a platform that has been
built over the front of the Court’s dress circle, the audience is seated in
the circle and gallery. We face the four actors who also remain seated
throughout as they recite these incantations of love and loss.
In Kane’s hypnotic cascade of words, played with a spontaneous precision by
this superb company, Crave is full of resonant images of emotional
desolation but also, sometimes, hope. As well as Craigie, the other
extraordinary performers are Eileen Walsh, Andrew Scott and Alan
Williams.
Seeing it with 4.48 Psychosis is like taking a trip on the London
Eye, but with far more devastating consequences. The experience gives you a totally
different perspective on familiar landmarks of the human condition; and you
return to earth, or at least Sloane Square, with a totally changed view.
