The Lyric Hammersmith’s production of Sarah Kane’s Blasted has been crowned 2011’s Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre.
Kane’s brutal play, most certainly not one for the faint hearted, played at the West London venue in the autumn of 2010, once again reminding theatregoers of the groundbreaking talent lost when Kane committed suicide in 1999.
Lyric Hammersmith Artistic Director Sean Holmes directed the production that starred Danny Webb, Lydia Wilson and Aidan Kelly. The play opens in a hotel room where troubled young woman Cate spends the night with a racist, misogynist, violent journalist. It turns on its head when a soldier bursts into the room, bringing with him an apocalyptic vision, and delivers a brutal comeuppance.
The tale of rape, torture, cannibalism and murder triumphed in an eclectic category that also contained Soho theatre’s Moscow-set Ivan And The Dogs, the Royal Court’s Afghanistan drama The Empire and Chris Rolls’s production of Les Parents Terribles, which was staged at the Trafalgar Studios 2 as part of the Donmar Trafalgar season.