Reviewing a piece by the late Sarah Kane is a loaded task. Dead by her own hand at the age of 28, Kane and her plays now have an uncomfortable aura of hagiolatry about them. So all credit to Oxford Stage Company for giving us the chance for a clear-headed re-analysis, with this first professional revival of her third work.
It's easy to see why Cleansed provoked such outrage at its 1998 premiere. Anal rape, mutilation, castration, electrocution, graphically simulated sex between siblings, smack injected into eyeballs, even force-feeding of an entire box of Terry's All Gold: there is no horror that Kane omits.
Nominally, it's a look at the inmates of some sort of deranged asylum; allegedly, it explores the limits to which humans will go for love; actually, it's so unrelenting in its gruesomeness that it goes full circle to become risible. This is the pantomime that will not be playing at Christmas.
In the cavernous black space, full of echoing institutional silence, seven game actors try their hardest to anchor the frustratingly fragmentary scenes and sparse, often nonsensical, dialogue.
Sean Holmes's reverential production pads out Kane's words with long, well-sustained periods of silence, in which chocolate is consumed and body parts lopped off. For under the regime of the sinister Tinker (Paul Brennen), no experiment is excessive when it comes to the workings of the human heart.
Characters variously put on and take off new clothes. All that is missing is an emperor.
Until 3 December. Information: 020 7503 1646.
Cleansed
