(Lungani Mabaso and Nokuphiwa Adam. Pic by Val Adamson)British playwright Sarah Kane’s powerful, dark and aggressive black comedy Phaedra’s Love, will be staged in the Courtyard Theatre from August 9 for a short run.
First written and performed in 1996, Kane’s masterful work is a contemporary adaptation of Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s classic Phaedra. The play explores the brutal nature of love, social relations, nihilism and belief through the example of an affair between a queen and her stepson. It considers the rise of a society increasingly beginning to reflect the images of violence and neglect as watched by Hippolytus on television.
Set in the royal palace of a modern European royal family, the play follows Phaedra’s obsessive and thrilling desire for her stepson, the empty and unaffected Hippolytus who represents contemporary society’s rapid descent into artificiality and the rejection of social structures.
Included in this staging of the play is a chorus performed as hoodie-wearing ‘chavs’ who represent the marginalised, misunderstood and neglected underbelly of society providing both funny and disturbing social commentary. With a nod to contemporary British comedy and pop culture Phaedra’s Love, highlights significant social issues, as well as introducing the voice of one of Britain’s most talented writers.
Sarah Kane’s works tend to deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, psychological torture and death. Her writing is intense, sharp and poetic and her productions are noted for their dramatic levels of staged violence and brutality.
“Kane, dead by her own hand at the age of 29, was notorious for her uncompromisingly brutal plays featuring graphic sex and violence. At times the play seems like a parody of Greek tragedy, spliced with Quentin Tarantino, with its breakneck speed and intensity and gore. There's enough sexual obsession and perversity and anguishing over sin, God and the banality of existence to last a lifetime,” commented George Tew writing for The Daily Info Oxford.
British critic Lyn Gardner in her review in The Guardian in 2005 remarked: “The late Sarah Kane gives it to us as a brutal black comedy, a savage farce in which it is not trousers that are dropped, but a dying man's entrails. Kane was only 24 when she wrote this brief play… but she already understood despair acutely. Phaedra’s Love, is about despair - the despair of young Hippolytus, who feels absolutely nothing and understands too much, and of his stepmother, Phaedra, who feels too much and understands too little.”
Phaedra’s Love, is directed by Marcia Peschke and features students from the Department of Drama Studies. It will be staged from August 9 to 14 daily at 19h00 at the Courtyard Theatre, Steve Biko / Mansfield Road, DUT. Tickets R35 at the door or booked through Lebohang Sibisi on 031 373 2194. This show is rated 18 for adult content and violence.
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