Rebecca Frecknall’s revival of Sarah Kane’s 1998 play Cleansed at London’s Almeida Theatre is praised as a powerful and technically accomplished staging of a notoriously difficult work. The review argues that its extreme violence, torture and sexual persecution feel particularly resonant amid contemporary conflicts and abuses, while its brutality is balanced by characters’ persistent desire for love, connection and beauty.

Set in a university-like institution with echoes of a prison or concentration camp, the play centres on Tinker, an apparently ordinary torturer who targets prisoners, especially gay men and people whose identities are treated as aberrant. The production draws associations with Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and violence in Gaza; its cast is commended for handling graphic material without melodrama, and Madeleine Girling’s design for creating an oppressive, institutional atmosphere.