I've just read Sarah Kane's posthumous Completed Plays.

This is a collection of plays, each of which are mind-expandingly great. I'm floored by Kane's simplicity, both in words and action, motion, inaction, and... Imagine Homer's The Odyssey written in simple... Nah, that comparison is wrong.

Kane is much stronger than Homer, in human ways. Sure, The Odyssey is about gods and humans, and Kane wrote beautifully and honestly and fat-renderedly about human experiences. Catharsis without shock value. Innards-out without trying-to-impress.

I'll let the first paragraphs of the introduction of the book speak:

Sarah Kane is best known for the way her career began, in the extraordinary public controversy over Blasted, and the it ended: in her suicide and the posthumous production of her last play, 4.48 Psychosis. Both were shocking and defining moments in recent British theatre and their way shadows are bound to haunt any reading of her work. But it would be a pity if these extraordinary events were to distract from the qualities of the five plays she left behind; a pity if, in attending to the mythology of the author, we were to miss the explosive theatricality, the lyricism, the emotional power, and the bleak humour that is contained within the plays themselves.

Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis add up to a body of work which pushed recklessly at the naturalistic boundaries of British theatre. Each play was a new step on an artistic journey in which Kane mapped the darkest and most unforgiving internal landscapes: landscapes of violation, of loneliness, of power, of mental collapse and, most consistently, the landscape of love.

Herr are loose quotes from some of the plays in the book.

Blasted

Scene One

A very expensive hotel room in Leeds - the kind that is so expensive it could be anywhere in the world.

Cate Why don't you give up smoking?

Ian (Laughs.)

Cate You should. They'll make you ill.

Ian Too late for that.

There is a blinding light, then a huge explosion.

Blackout.

The sound of summer rain.

Scene Three

The hotel has been blasted by a mortar bomb.

There is a large hole in one of the walls, and everything is covered in dust which is still falling.

Phaedra's Love

Scene Three

Strophe is working.

Phaedra enters.

Strophe Mother.

Phaedra Go away fuck off don't touch me don't talk to me stay with me.

Priest It's not an ordinary family.

Hippolytus No. None of us are related to each other.

Priest Royalty is chosen. Because you are more privileged than most you are also more culpable. God

Hippolytus There is no God. There is. No God.

Priest Perhaps you'll find there is. And what will uoi do then? There's no repentance in the next life, only in this one.

Hippolytus What do you suggest, a last minute conversion just in case? Die as if there is a God, knowing that there isn't? No. If there is a God, I'd like to look him in the face knowing I'd died as I'd lived. In conscious sin.

Priest Hippolytus.

Hippolytus I'm sure God would be intelligent enough to see through any eleventh hour confession of mine.

Priest God is merciful. He chose you.

Hippolytus Bad choice.

Cleansed

A An American woman translated a novel from Spanish into English. She asked her Spanish classmate his opinion of her work. The translation was very bad. He said he would help her and she offered to pay him for his time. He refused. She offered to take him out to dinner. This was acceptable to him so he agreed. But she forgot. The Spaniard is still waiting for his dinner.

B El dinero viene solo.

C Alone.

M If love would come.

A And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your

and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm how you you and rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder I could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the/overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding ongoing never-ending love I have for you.

4.48 Psychosis

At 4.48 when desperation visits I shall hang myself to the sound of my lover's breathing

I do not want to die

I have become so depressed by the fact of my mortality that I have decided to commit suicide

I do not want to live

A room of expressionless faces staring blankly at my pain, so devoid of meaning there must be evil intent.

Dr This and Dr That and Dr Whatsit who's just passing and thought he'd pop in to take the piss as well. Burning in a hot tunnel of dismay, my humiliation complete as I shake without reason and stumble over words and have nothing to say about my illness' which anyway amounts only to knowing that there's no point in anything because I'm going to die. And I am deadlocked by that smooth psychiatric voice of reason which tells me there is an objective reality in which my body and mind are one. But I am not here and never have been. Dr This writes it down and Dr That attempts a sympathetic murmur. Watching me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of my aching shame.

Shame shame shame. Drown in your fucking shame.

Sometimes I turn around and catch the smell of you and I cannot go on I cannot fucking go on without expressing this terrible so fucking awful physical aching fucking longing I have for you. And I cannot believe that I can feel this for you and you feel nothing. Do you feel nothing?

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you for rejecting me by never being there, fuck you for making me feel shit about myself, fuck you for bleeding the fucking love and life out of me, fuck my father for fucking up my life for good and fuck mother for not leaving him, but most of all, fuck you God for making me love a person who does not exist, FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

Okay, let's do it, let's do the drugs, let's do the chemical lobotomy, let's shut down the higher functions of my brain and perhaps I'll be a bit more fucking capable of living.

Let's do it.