The British theatre wave of the 1990s was labelled by a theatre critic Alks Sierz "in-yer-face theatre". The term reflects both the language and the means of expression of the new young theatre makers. "Yer" stands for colloquial "your" and suggests that the characters speaking colloquial language are either working class or careless and rebellious middle class youth. "In the face" style suggest an offensive or shocking material thrown at the audience without inhibitions. The 90s in Britain saw substantial cuts from the Art Council, as well as experienced the decadent feel of the end of the millennium, combined with disappointment with the social order and hopelessness for the future. Similar situation took place earlier in the 50s and 60s, when the wave of "Angry Young Man" moved through the cinema and theatre with authors such as John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. Otherwise known as "kitchen sink drama" those plays depicted lives of working-class men and women, and focused on social and political issues.
Aleks Sierz in his article Cool Britannia? 'In-Yer-Face' Writing in the British Theatre Today names the big four of the "in-yer-face theatre" - Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth and Anthony Neilson. I remember seeing Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking years ago in Poland, directed by Polish Pawel Lysak and it did not quite have the power of the original. The interesting thing is that Sierz's big four are labelled in the east as "brutalists" - perhaps that is why their plays had to be softened for "them folks". But let us now have a closer look at Sarah Kane - who debuted with Blasted in 1995 at The Court Theatre, and is also the author of a controversial reworking of Jean Baptiste Racine's play Phedre, under the title Phaedra's Love. It is not the first reworking of the original story - Eurypides' Hippolitus, which was adapted not only by Racine, but also his contemporaries, the most competitive being Jacques Pradon who premiered his Phedre at the French court two days after Racine.
Sarah Kane, who originally wanted to be a poet, received her drama education at Bristol University. Her works include five plays and one short film. After suffering from depression she committed suicide in 1999 at the age of 28, right in the midst of fame and recognition. Her works deal with love, psychological and physical pain and death. Sierz outlines main characteristic of the new wave theatre, which Kane's work exemplify:
Violence as a way of exploring social issues, [...] the crisis of masculinity, [...] dubious attitude to women, elements of 'lad culture' [...] fashion and trend-spotting, [...] relish for Tarantino and drug culture, [...] semi-articulate yet concise and powerful language, [...] use of the present continuous tense [and] search for a modern national identity. In terms of stage imagery, drugs, sex and violence dominate. (325-32)
Phaedra's Love is a story about an upper class - or royal - lad in his twenties, who bored with the prosperity in which he lives abuses everyone around him from his family to his fans. He is a repulsive and immature man who spends his days watching television, masturbating, devouring takeaway junk food and apparently - sex on delivery. With all this he is only filling in until something happens: "Fill it up with tat. Bric-a-bra, bits and bobs, getting by, Christ Almighty wept" (Kane 75). Sarah Kane proposed a total reversal of Hippolytus role - whereas in Racine he is all moral, prude and chaste, Kane's Hippolytus is the source of all evil in the play. He considers sex to be nothing more than yet another distraction, and doesn't mean how, where or with whom - his stepsister, random man in the garden or his stepmother. Indeed, the way he pulls down Phaedra's head to perform a fellatio on him, and holding it until he finishes n her mouth - while not looking away from the television even for a while, presents him as a truly indifferent, even anaesthetised, for other people, their feelings and concerns. Even when those feelings are directed to him and have his best interest in mind.
The motif of incest was a popular one in early modern plays. John Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore is probably the most adequate example: a brother impregnates his sister and subsequently kills her to save her honour. In the meantime, due to various unexpected misunderstandings, the entire court is slaughtered, when the brother at the death's door, apparently still in love with his murdered sister laments that "it's a pity she's a whore" - while holding the baby's beating heart on a dagger. Now, this is probably a very exaggerated example, as not all plays were so explicit. But to be frank, I find it rather funny than tragic. This kind of plot is just too preposterous to take it seriously. Racine's Phedre is not even about incest, for there is no blood relation between Phedre and Hippolytus. Nowadays affairs with husband's son or wife's daughter are way too often - especially among the tabloid celebrities - to be shocked by them. Kane justifies this relationship when her Phaedra justifies her attraction to Hippolytus that "He's not my son" (67). The same stands for other characters - sleeping with one another in all possible combinations. I very much enjoyed reading Sarah Kane, in fact Phaedra's Love made me read her other works and search for the film. Yes - it is highly entertaining but not tragic. For the reason I mentioned above, I do not think that contextualising early modern plays in the 20th century will serve any good either the original or the remake. If anything, I would suggest rewriting it in the farse or black comedy style of Monty Python (or Bo Selecta, or Black Books for that matter).
Is it still fresh? No. Was it fresh in the 90s? No. It is drama. Drama, per definition is not fresh (although it can, and often is, extremely engaging), unless it can be de-dramatised. The freshest thing since the appearance of post-dramatic theatre is probably Jan Fabre and Rimini Protokoll. I have seen over 100 performances only in the last season in The Netherlands and, although there are a lot of excellent works presented, there is nothing which could be called FRESH. Perhaps Ivo Dimchev with his anti-show is the freshest nowadays. But Sarah Kane is not.
Works Cited
Kane, Sarah. Blasted and Phaedra's Love. London: Methuen, 1996.
Sierz, Aleks. "Cool Britania? 'In-Yer-Face Theatre' Writing in the British Theatre Today." New Theatre Quarterly Nov. 1998: 324-333.
Sarah Kane, who originally wanted to be a poet, received her drama education at Bristol University. Her works include five plays and one short film. After suffering from depression she committed suicide in 1999 at the age of 28, right in the midst of fame and recognition. Her works deal with love, psychological and physical pain and death. Sierz outlines main characteristic of the new wave theatre, which Kane's work exemplify:
Violence as a way of exploring social issues, [...] the crisis of masculinity, [...] dubious attitude to women, elements of 'lad culture' [...] fashion and trend-spotting, [...] relish for Tarantino and drug culture, [...] semi-articulate yet concise and powerful language, [...] use of the present continuous tense [and] search for a modern national identity. In terms of stage imagery, drugs, sex and violence dominate. (325-32)
Phaedra's Love is a story about an upper class - or royal - lad in his twenties, who bored with the prosperity in which he lives abuses everyone around him from his family to his fans. He is a repulsive and immature man who spends his days watching television, masturbating, devouring takeaway junk food and apparently - sex on delivery. With all this he is only filling in until something happens: "Fill it up with tat. Bric-a-bra, bits and bobs, getting by, Christ Almighty wept" (Kane 75). Sarah Kane proposed a total reversal of Hippolytus role - whereas in Racine he is all moral, prude and chaste, Kane's Hippolytus is the source of all evil in the play. He considers sex to be nothing more than yet another distraction, and doesn't mean how, where or with whom - his stepsister, random man in the garden or his stepmother. Indeed, the way he pulls down Phaedra's head to perform a fellatio on him, and holding it until he finishes n her mouth - while not looking away from the television even for a while, presents him as a truly indifferent, even anaesthetised, for other people, their feelings and concerns. Even when those feelings are directed to him and have his best interest in mind.
The motif of incest was a popular one in early modern plays. John Ford's Tis Pity She's a Whore is probably the most adequate example: a brother impregnates his sister and subsequently kills her to save her honour. In the meantime, due to various unexpected misunderstandings, the entire court is slaughtered, when the brother at the death's door, apparently still in love with his murdered sister laments that "it's a pity she's a whore" - while holding the baby's beating heart on a dagger. Now, this is probably a very exaggerated example, as not all plays were so explicit. But to be frank, I find it rather funny than tragic. This kind of plot is just too preposterous to take it seriously. Racine's Phedre is not even about incest, for there is no blood relation between Phedre and Hippolytus. Nowadays affairs with husband's son or wife's daughter are way too often - especially among the tabloid celebrities - to be shocked by them. Kane justifies this relationship when her Phaedra justifies her attraction to Hippolytus that "He's not my son" (67). The same stands for other characters - sleeping with one another in all possible combinations. I very much enjoyed reading Sarah Kane, in fact Phaedra's Love made me read her other works and search for the film. Yes - it is highly entertaining but not tragic. For the reason I mentioned above, I do not think that contextualising early modern plays in the 20th century will serve any good either the original or the remake. If anything, I would suggest rewriting it in the farse or black comedy style of Monty Python (or Bo Selecta, or Black Books for that matter).
Is it still fresh? No. Was it fresh in the 90s? No. It is drama. Drama, per definition is not fresh (although it can, and often is, extremely engaging), unless it can be de-dramatised. The freshest thing since the appearance of post-dramatic theatre is probably Jan Fabre and Rimini Protokoll. I have seen over 100 performances only in the last season in The Netherlands and, although there are a lot of excellent works presented, there is nothing which could be called FRESH. Perhaps Ivo Dimchev with his anti-show is the freshest nowadays. But Sarah Kane is not.
Works Cited
Kane, Sarah. Blasted and Phaedra's Love. London: Methuen, 1996.
Sierz, Aleks. "Cool Britania? 'In-Yer-Face Theatre' Writing in the British Theatre Today." New Theatre Quarterly Nov. 1998: 324-333.