Sarah Kane was never big on fuzzy little bunnies or sunshine and cheery rainbows.
In fact, the young British playwright courted a dark affection for teasing out the raw violence and bleak brutality that permeated her early dramatic works. But in “Crave,” one of Kane’s final contributions before her tragic death in 1999 at age 28, the suicidal author’s voice switches from one crippled by angst and fear to panicked calls of distress.
It’s an hour-long ode to despair, a feverish dream filled with an overwhelming sense of human longing — for attention, affection, love, sex — anything that will allow the four nameless Kane proxies to feel as though they are part of something bigger, something that would fill them and make them feel whole. There is no setting, no stage directions, no preface, no plot and no intermission.
At its very best, “Crave” is a fragmented and poetic blend of psychology delivered through singular phrases au courant: “This can’t go on” and a repeated canon of “What did they do to me?” land with stunning effect. But just as a feverish dream bears depth only to the dreamer, the retelling of such surreal flashes is ultimately rendered meaningless to everyone else. So while “Crave” holds the potential to become a luxurious act of abstract performance art, it also represents experimental theater at its compulsive worst.
Originally written as one long cathartic poem culled from Kane’s personal notes and presented under the pen name Marie Kelvedon (Kane grew up in Kelvedon Hatch, Essex), “Crave” openly demonstrates lucid glimpses into a collective subconscious bleeding with claustrophobia. Kane often expresses an urgent sense of need, but the craving is never clearly defined. Moving from the obvious bons mots of infidelity and obsession to the scolding language of callous victims, Kane angles “Crave” to such an elusive edge that the production is left wide open to directorial interpretation.
Signature Theatre tapped Jeremy Skidmore, the current Artistic Director of Theater Alliance, to inaugurate their new 99-seat ARK Theatre with a rare American production of Kane’s work. The ARK itself redefines the intimacy of a black box space — think a cleaner, sharper Source stage — as a tidy place where you feel well tucked in, a room almost electric with possibility. Here, Skidmore borrowed from the artistic reserves at his own company, hiring performers and designers familiar to Theater Alliance audiences. The actors play in Tony Cisek’s giant sandbox set, a large square filled with sparkling black sand, while Mark Anduss fills the void with jarring urban sounds of an unidentifiable city.
Under Skidmore’s taut vision, “Crave” takes on an orchestral quality, and Kane’s free verse moves around with the motion of a complex symphony, one with several defined movements. The actors perform Skidmore’s choreography through a ballet of disconnected phrases in an angry dance that makes his a sexy, visceral production fraught with nervous tension.
But that description may seem a little generous. From the very beginning of the evening, you find yourself distracted with persistent questions of why and who in a futile attempt to link these anonymous people together. And since Skidmore fails to offer some sort of appealing context to Kane’s speech, the execution can feel a bit like watching an acting exercise of entirely random interpretations.
More distinct characters would help personalize the story — and therefore universalize its message — but to its credit, “Crave” features an ensemble of four actors who present Kane’s poetry as though it is a personal account of their own thoughts, emotions and desires. Kathleen Coons and Deborah Hazlett are the two female voices, while John Lescault and Joe Isenberg portray deplorable men languishing in the shadows.
“Theater has no memory, which makes it the most existential of the arts,” Kane claimed in 1998. And though her entire repertoire consists of only five plays, her work has produced a cult-like following, especially among student populations in both Europe and the United States. There is a strange and discomforting beauty in Kane’s lyricism, and as a work of art, “Crave” is bold and jarring. More performance art than drama, better as literature than as art, and best as a form of Dada storytelling of how we express emotion to others, Signature Theatre’s risky venture into Kane territory offers an unsettling evening of unnerving anticipation and a vague expedition into the human psyche.
If you go
» “Crave” by Sarah Kane, through April 1
Director: Jeremy Skidmore
Venue: Signature Theatre, 2800 S. Stafford St., Arlington
Performances: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays.; 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays
Tickets: $33-$55
Info: Call 703-820-9771 or visit www.signature-theatre.org
