Jack Riddiford and Leo Bill in Cleansed [Marc Brenner]

SARAH Kane’s Cleansed has lost none of its power, but our world feels so unremittingly bleak that it makes for uneasy viewing. That said, I met one theatre-goer who had travelled from the US just to see this production – proof that Kane’s radical form and uncompromising intensity continue to exert a fascination across borders.

The setting is a dingy institute, supposedly a university, but it could be a prison, a hospital or torture basement. Various characters are tormented by a sadistic overseer, Tinker (a terrifying Leo Bill).

You need a strong stomach. The violence is presented both viscerally and stylistically.

Kane’s work speaks to a wider political narrative. In the world of Cleansed, people are routinely tortured for being gay, for speaking out, for daring to be different.

Several of the characters are punished merely for expressing love. Carl (Luke Cinque-White) comes off worst. His tongue is cut out for professing feelings for Rod (Parth Thakerar), and his hands and feet are then mutilated.

Grace (Pearl Chanda) commits incest with her brother Graham (Jack Riddiford), real or imagined, and both are punished – she undergoes a forced gender reassignment. Robin (Stuart Thompson) buys chocolates for Grace and is forced, by Tinker, to eat them all. An anonymous woman (Lizzy Connolly), who sexually performs for Tinker every night in a peep show, is broken by the cycle of abuse.

Kane piles on the horror and it’s sometimes unbearable to watch, yet Cleansed is given an extraordinary staging by Rebecca Frecknall, and brilliantly acted by the committed, seven-strong cast.

Until August 29
almeida.co.uk/