Blasted: at SiLo

By FRANCIS TILL

Rape and cannibalism have sparked the most controversy about this play, but there's really quite a lot more to be distressed about or offended by in this two-hour, 10-minute marathon of a production.

That said, there's also a tremendous amount of what a censorship board might call redeeming social value - and a fair amount of deeply wry humour - woven into the warp and woof of this dense and structurally complex work.

Sarah Kane killed herself a few years after writing the play, and it is often viewed through that lens.

But the work has a great and autonomous vitality that is fully realised in this production.

It opens with a naturalistic phase that takes an hour to unfold.

A middle-aged journalist, Ian (Jeff Gane), delusionally paranoid and afflicted with some disease that is rotting him away from the inside out, brings a young, intellectually disordered girl, Cate (Josephine Davison), to a hotel room in Leeds for the purpose of re-establishing an earlier sexual relationship.

She baulks, he is insistent, and various forms of violence ensue.

Kane adds much to what could have been a simple discussion of sexual power by injecting a hopeless, self-defeating search for tenderness in both characters, which is almost casually interleaved with horrifying acts of banal brutality.

A surrealistic second half sees Leeds transformed by war's insanity, leading to an invasion of the room by an anonymous soldier (Matt Sunderland).

He visits on Ian a ferocious version of what Ian had earlier brought to Cate - and extends the search for tenderness in several unlikely, but potent, directions.

Josephine Davison shines throughout. Her seizures inspire awe, and she flawlessly projects a damaged, coltish innocence that succeeds in binding the audience to her.

Jeff Gane's superb rendition of Ian not only brings out the character's grotesque qualities but firmly establishes his humanity.

And Matt Sunderland's fundamental man, the soldier, is compellingly feral in appetite and execution.

Director Michael Lawrence has faced down the vortex of this script to produce a rich and challenging theatrical event.