The definitive, complete edition of all Kane's plays.

When Blasted was first produced at the Royal Court in 1995 it was hailed jointly as a masterpiece and a "disgusting piece of filth" (Daily Mail). Subsequently that play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world.

Blasted
In 1995 Sarah Kane's first full-length play Blasted opened. It became the cause celebre of the theatrical year, making front-page headlines and outraging critics with its depiction of rape, torture and violence in civil war.

Phaedra's Love
Sarah Kane's radical reworking of Seneca's classical tragedy of incest and unrequited lust. Phaedra's Love is a bold and provocative revisioning of the story of Phaedra's obsessive and destructive love of her son Hippolytus and his violent punishment by Theseus.

Cleansed
A provocative play which probes the nightmarish world of twenty-somethings coming to grips with sexuality, social ostracism and the effects of drugs. Cleansed premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in spring 1998.

Crave
Set in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire. Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in September 1998.

4.48 Psychosis
Kane's last play premiered posthumously at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in June 2000.
"Here am I
and there is my body
dancing on glass
In accident time where there are no accidents
You have no choice
the choice comes after"

This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin.

"Kane wrote simply and starkly about the world she saw around her...a mature and vividly theatrical response to the pain of living." The Guardian (London)

"Until last night I thought I was immune from shock in any theatre. I am not." The Daily Mail (London), on "Blasted"

"The beauty and rawness...the combination of unprocessed honesty and meticulous craft — remains as striking as ever; Kane's power to take material beyond endurance and shape it, burnish it, laugh at it, dominate with her art." Scotsman (U.K.)

"A hugely unnerving theatrical experience, shot through with the language of the Bible and a genuinely poetic richness." Time Out London, on "Crave"

"[4.48 Psychosis is as] compact and beautiful as a diamond in structure — and yet the mood it inspires is as black as coal." Time Out London

"Sheer unadulterated brutalism." The Evening Standard (London), on "Blasted"

"Kane's achievement [in Phaedra's Love] is to have humanised the antics of the pounding royals. Her sulphurous dialgoue is full of reeking toughness." The Evening Standard (London)

"[Crave is a] dramatic poem in the late-Beckett style, sometimes a chamber quartet for lost voices." The Times (London)

"Pure theatre or rather impure theatre: dirty, alarming, dangerous." The Observer (U.K.), on "Phaedra's Love"

This volume contains the complete collection of Sarah Kane's plays, including "Blasted"; "Phaedra's Love"; "Cleansed"; "Crave"; "4.48 Psychosis"; and "Skin".

An anthology of the complete works of one of the most important and controversial dramatists of the late twentieth century. All the plays pushed to the limits the naturalistic boundaries of British theatre and are now widely studied at schools and colleges. This volume contains all of Sarah Kane's plays: Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, and Skin, written before her death in 1999.

Chronology vii
Introduction by David Greig
Blasted 1
Phaedra's Love 63
Cleansed 105
Crave 153
4.48 Psychosis 203
Skin 247