Extremes

Read a couple of plays yesterday, and they really couldn't have been more different. Absolutely loved John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, and knew I was going to, since I saw the film a while ago and loved that. In fact, I seem to remember writing good things about Meryl Streep's performance particularly in this very Place, and if I didn't mention it then I can tell you that Philip Seymour Hoffman - may he Rest In Peace - was no slouch either as the guilty? guiltless? priest. The play itself is a marvellous piece of theatre: cool, intelligent, taut, compassionate.

Very different from Sarah Kane's Blasted  which I loathed, though not absolutely. Part of me thought it was brilliant, which made the loathing even more intense. And loathed is the wrong word for something that got deeply under whatever layer protects my cerebrum, lodging itself in my consciousness like a malignant tumour. That's a pretty lame image for what I'm trying to express and I can tell you now, Ms Kane would have come up with something a lot more viscerally unpleasant because this is what she did very, very well indeed when she was with us. The sad fact she isn't any longer, just adds to all that makes Blasted an almost unbearable piece of work. If I ever had the chance to see it staged I doubt if I would want to go.

But I'm not sure. Almost unbearable is not quite the same thing as completely unwatchable and amidst all the cruelty and despair of the play there are glimpses of some kind of redemptive power. Having felt fairly sick when I finished it last night - in bed, actually - I read it again today, still numbed, and I suppose that says something, though I'm not quite sure what. I'll have to come back to this. Unfinished business. Cannot process.