I Get Blasted

Sometimes, a night at the theater is painful for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes, however, an evening of theater can be shocking and cruel and make you want to go again and again. The American Premiere production of "Blasted" by Sarah Kane at the Soho Rep was just that experience.

About 6 months ago, I received an e-mail from my good friend Reed Birney. Reed is an accomplished and talented New York actor who works all the time, but you would never consider him a star. He is, however, universally adored by the New York theater community, and in a widely distributed e-mail, he urges a vast network of friends and colleagues, to “act quickly!” He’s appearing in "Blasted" and tickets are already flying out the door. "Besides," the e-mail continued, “not only do you get to see me make my nude stage debut, but I’m sure that all of you want to see me brutally raped at gunpoint.”

Neither one, truthfully... but to celebrate my 54-year old friend's courage to bare his bits on the boards AND to witness the rare opportunity to see a fully mounted production from the limited cannon of Sarah Kane, enfant terrible of the London Theater in the last glimmers of the 20th Century, that is worth bucking my inboard inertia and, as the e-mail advised, taking immediate action.

"Blasted" was Kane’s first play, begun when she was still a schoolgirl in Birmingham, UK, and premiered in 1995 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The action of the play is set in a room of a luxurious hotel in the north of England, where all seems normal - though there are vague references to a gathering menace in the streets below. Ian, played by Birney in this production that I am now hungry to see, seeks to reignite a dubious affair from the past with an emotionally disturbed innocent named Cate. Ian bristles with gin-stoked rage when his expectations are not met, and a vicious cycle of abuse and brutality begins to be leveled from both sides. After the appearance of a starving, machine-gun-toting soldier from some Baltic conflict, the play descends from a naturalistic though disturbing domestic scene into an increasingly nightmarish world of horrific vignettes depicting anal rape, cannibalism and other shocking brutalities that largely enraged the British press at its premier. The Daily Mail in a review typical among the London dailies referred to the play as a “disgusting feast of filth." "Blasted" was, however, praised by many of Kane’s supporters as an important work, making important parallels between domestic violence and war, and between emotional and physical violence. Had she not suffered from debilitating depression, Kane may have seen those critics eat their words. She took her own life at 29, just two years after "Blasted" was first produced.

Now, it’s a cold Wednesday dusk, an hour before curtain, and I’m walking through what I remember from my salad days as a hell-hole - south-of-Canal Street neighborhood, now newly chic. My destination: the venerable Soho Rep, where "Blasted" is playing and, incidentally, where I made my own NY acting debut, partially clothed, in 1977. I am filled with magical thoughts as I am en route to the same theater where my career in NYC began, the same theater where Sarah Kane is receiving the American debut of her play AND where my BFF Reed Birney is making his big-city debut-de-naked-butt. I am loving life at this very moment, when out of this existential reverie appears an angel. It’s Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Marsha Norman.

“Marsha!” I say.
“Stephen!” she replies, “What are you doing in my neighborhood?”
“I’m seeing this play at Soho Rep,” says I.
A long pause with concern beginning to color her face.
“OOOOO…” she keens, “I hear it’s a pretty rough go.”
“So I’ve heard,” says I.
“Here’s what you do…” she says, "Have a drink, a stiff one.” (I’m thinking, no problem there) “And,” she continues, “purchase a bar of your favorite milk chocolate… consume it quietly during the performance. Good Luck.” With that, she was gone.

I followed her instructions to a T.

The production did not disappoint. To say the actors were good, or even great, doesn’t even begin to describe. Yes, their performances were convincing, accomplished, exciting, but more than that… they were brave. Even within the artifice of theater, to surrender oneself each evening to the lowest depths of human experience can take a toll on an actor’s psyche. It’s a balancing act of professional approach and artistic commitment. To be so convincing, and yet come through the experience six nights/8 times a week uncrushed by the weight of such darkness, is a victory as glorious as any award.

As for me, the medication of one stiff drink quickly wore off as I was drawn into this world. But as I continued to follow that action down, I found myself becoming more and more detached emotionally. I could no sooner accompany the characters to where they were headed than follow them to Mars. Why would I want to? I have my own demons to wrestle with, thank you very much. But, as I became more and more free from my emotions, my judgments began to soften, and my ideas about the action onstage became irrelevant. Maybe it was the chocolate, but a curious change began to take place: the more brutal, the more graphic and repellent the action became, the lighter I felt. With each mounting atrocity - depicted with such care and craft by this extraordinary cast, director and production- I began to believe that I was being given a gift, an opportunity to exercise the darkest aspects of my own psyche, the parts appearing only in my worst nightmares, and to allow this shadow to emerge safely. After experiencing two hours' artful representation of mankind at its most depraved, I left the theater not quite so afraid.

And, thanks to Marsha Norman, I had chocolate to share with my battle-scarred companions to the right and left of me… a communion.

Afterwards, over drinks with Reed at some Church Street dive, I asked what performing in this play was like for him. He said that he’d never had such a liberating experience in his life, onstage or off. As strange as it sounds, I knew exactly what he meant.