Phaedra’s Love

Sarah Kane’s radical reworking of Seneca’s classical tragedy of incest and unrequited lust is a bold and provocative revisioning set amidst some of the nastiest moments of the current British monarchy. One of the exponents of “in-yer-face” theatre, Kane was only 24 when she wrote this brief play as a commission for the Gate Theatre in London, but she already understood despair acutely. She was a tormented soul who wrote simply and bluntly about the world she saw around her, a world where violence and love were intertwined. She did what no one in her time managed to do: she spoke the unspeakable, delivering a brutal black comedy, a savage farce that challenges us to consider what is truly meaningful in our lives. For more information see here.