The play is set in a university which (according to the blurb of the published script) is operating as "an institution designed to rid society of its undesirables" where "a group of inmates try to save themselves through love" while under the rule of the sadistic Tinker.
Tinker enters the room after they are finished, and slits Rod's throat in front of Carl, who holds him as he dies.
Upset that Grace is not listening, Robin takes off the stockings he has been wearing and ties them around his neck.
Sarah Kane stated that she "started [writing Cleansed] before Blasted was even staged" and that "it took three years to finish it.
"[7] Kane claimed that she had written Cleansed specifically as a play that would only work as a piece of theatre and could not be adapted to other dramatic mediums "I made the deliberate decision to write something that couldn't be film or television.
[13] Other inspirations include Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, August Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata, Franz Kafka's The Trial and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
[14] Grace's line directed at Graham "Love me or kill me" is taken from John Ford's tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.
The line is said in Ford's play by the characters Bologna and Annabella who, like Grace and Graham in Cleansed, are siblings that are engaged in an incestuous relationship with each other.
"[4] It was originally thought that the final part of this supposed trilogy was incomplete due to Kane's untimely death in 1999.
[3] Another reason why Viva Death might have been abandoned is because, according to Nils Tabert who was the German translator of Cleansed, Sarah Kane had purposely moved away from creating representations of violence when she wrote her next play Crave: "she called from Edinburgh at some stage saying 'I'm past violence – I'm really sick of it.
Examples include: "Tinker produces a large pair of scissors and cuts off Carl's tongue" (Scene Four).
"[20]Director of the 2016 National Theatre production of the play, Katie Mitchell, has said "Kane's stage directions request literal violence […] A tongue is cut off with a pair of scissors.
"[21] Towards the end of the production's run actress Suzan Sylvester was unable to perform as Grace due to being injured.
[22] Actor Daniel Evans, who played Robin, said that Sylvester "injured her back during one of the flying sequences".
Could it be pushed back in place?” but the problem was that she had to be flown halfway up a wall and do all sorts of extraordinary things, which is just not possible to do with a slipped disc.
And the next thing I knew I was being flown halfway up a wall going: “Nah, I can't do this...” But in the end, I did the last three nights.
"[12]Director James MacDonald said that while rehearsing with Kane in the role they had reworked "the bit in which the actress used to be thrown up against the wall and beaten up" as "we couldn't risk a writer".
It's even possible – at a stretch – to see the play's climatic stitching of a penis to her character's crotch as a symbol of the success of this audacious theatrical transplant.
"[27] Kane elaborated on this realisation of hers in a 1998 interview at Royal Holloway University: "I can't talk about all acting, but what Cleansed asked for was extreme simplicity.
[12]According to critic Aleks Sierz in his book In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, when he saw the play "The audience, many of whom were gay, was very small but appreciative.
People loved the play's gender confusions, laughing at Robin's clumsiness as he and Grace swap clothes, and were also gripped by the raw emotion onstage; only one person walked out.
"[28] However, this seems to be contradicted by critic Graham Saunders who said "I gather Cleansed was not the most audience friendly of plays and sometimes got a hostile reaction" when interviewing actor Stuart McQuarrie, who originated the role of Tinker.
And what I desperately wanted to do was climb down and go into the audience to find him and bring him up onstage and try to explain the play, but then I'm glad I didn't because it would've been a terrible thing to do, because I really respect that guy for making his feelings known when everyone else may have been clapping out of duty.
First major British Revival (London, 2005)[30][31] 2 November 2005 at the Arcola Theatre.Performed by the Oxford Stage Company.Directed by Sean Holmes.
United States Production (New Haven, Connecticut, 2024) Premiered on 20 January 2024 at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale in the University Theatre.
[35] The academic and playwright Dan Rebellato has noted that much of the play's action could be interpreted as a dream or hallucination: "After all, are these events even real?
There's certainly a way of seeing Cleansed as enfolding entirely in the dying mind of Graham as he takes the lethal dose of crack at the end of scene 1.
"[36] Reviewing the first production of Cleansed, the critic John Peter wrote about the nightmarish quality of the play: "Cleansed (Royal Court/Duke of York's) is a nightmare of a play: like a nightmare, it unreels somewhere between the back of your eyes and the centre of your brain with an unpredictable but remorseless logic.
"[37]Katie Mitchell's 2016 National Theatre production of the play had the character of Grace present in every scene.
But doing it as surrealism meant that the actors could be happily inside a dream-landscape committing to what they were doing as opposed to going 'but this doesn't add up.