MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
Crave
by Sarah Kane
Chichester Festival
THE play begins and concludes with the line: “You’re dead to me.” It is also in the middle of this 50-minute piece from the darkly poetic Sarah Kane, who took her own life in 1999 aged 28: a fact usually known by audiences.
“You’re dead to me” is aimed at a character who may have raped, abused, or spurned (we’re never sure of the relationships between C, M, B and A). But I wondered if it was Kane-talk, the you and me of a divided self.
The reviewer should concentrate on the play, not the writer’s psyche, yet in her work they’re integral, and audiences might look for clues to the suicide; most of them content in their own core personalities.
MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Friendship, Four Letters of Love, Tin Soldier and The Ballad of Suzanne Cesaire


