Fortunately, the show is also being live streamed from Chichester Festival Theatre, meaning the live shows will continue until Saturday to an audience outside the building, rather than in it.Ĭrave is a play featuring four actors who assume various roles over the course of the 50-minute piece.

Though Sarah Kane’s Crave opened as a preview on Saturday and organised its official opening and press night on Monday, as a result of further changes to restrictions in England it can only play to a live audience until Wednesday. But this imaginative and passionate production makes me recommend that you search out future UEL Performing Arts productions.Live theatre isn’t so easy to come by these days. And I have to admit that, as far as the deeper meanings behind the play were concerned, I found my own way through quite challenging as well.īut then Kane’s work is not easy, and critics have pointed out that Crave dispenses with plot to a greater extent than any of her other work. But the performances were strong, and I left the bus keen to see more of this group’s work.Īctor Harrison Snell told me that “the script was challenging to interpret, and the actors had to find their own pathways through”. The performers had only had five days to rehearse, so I wasn’t surprised when there was a minute of silence because someone forgot their lines and the prompter needed to step in. Then they began to talk, but over each other, in a way that sometimes made it hard to follow the conversation. Two of the actors were staring at each other and screamed out from the other side of the bus, “You’re dead to me”. The play opened with dark mysterious music. What I didn’t realise at first was that some of the actors were already sitting amongst us. We were told to sit with our backs to the windows, so we could see better. The atmosphere outside and inside the bus was gloomy. Curtain up was at 6.30, so it was already dark by the time I walked around the back of the university’s West Building to board my venue for the night. The performance I went to took place on a bus – on the Docklands campus of The University of East London (UEL) – and was produced and performed by second year performing arts students. Her debut play Blasted was denounced as a “disgusting feast of filth”. Her previous works are known for their extremes of sex and cruelty and have attracted some scathing reviews. The first performance was in 1998 at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.Ĭrave was Kane’s fourth play, written a year before she committed suicide in 1999. It’s an angry, funny, kind, and cruel piece of work.

Crave is a one-act play by British playwright Sarah Kane, in which she presents her very personal meditation on the meaning of love.

Sarah kane crave