Crave (play)


Crave is a one-act play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was first performed in 1998 by the theatre company Paines Plough, with which Kane was writer-in-residence for the year, at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. The play was initially presented under the pseudonym Marie Kelvedon; Kane used a pseudonym to avoid the distraction of her reputation for graphic staged violence from her previous works. Crave was Kane's fourth play. It is dedicated by the author to Mark Ravenhill.

Structure

The play reflects a stylistic departure from Kane's previous works, using a non-linear, poetic style, and is notable for its lack of staged violence that had been a hallmark of the author's previous work; this style is continued in her next and final work, 4.48 Psychosis. The dialogue is intertextual, and often it is unclear whom each line is addressed to. Much of the delivery of the text is left up to directorial interpretation. The author does not provide context, stage directions or descriptions of characters. The sex and gender of the four characters is only identifiable from context within the play.

Themes and allusions

Crave continues the theme of pain in love that Kane had explored with previous plays, but is stylistically a departure. The play contains several dark themes, presented as issues haunting the four characters. These themes include rape, incest, pedophilia, anorexia, drug addiction, mental instability, murder, and suicide.
Kane incorporates numerous literary allusions in the text of the play, especially to The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. She also makes several references to biblical scripture, especially through the character of "A".

"Marie Kelvedon"

The pseudonym "Marie Kelvedon" was based on the village of Kelvedon Hatch, where Kane grew up. Kane included the following fictitious biography in the programme notes:

Popular culture

The lyrics to Icelandic singer Björk's song "An Echo, A Stain", released on the album Vespertine in 2001, are based on this play.