Crave at 53two

Oldham Coliseum Artistic Director Chris Lawson returns to the rehearsal room to direct Sarah Kane’s iconic one-act play under the atmospheric arches of Deansgate Castlefield at 53two.

Heart-rending, lyrical and loaded with edge-of-the-seat tension.

A deeply personal meditation on the meaning of love, Crave is heart-rending, lyrical and loaded with edge-of-the-seat tension. Billed as “angry, funny, defiant, kind and cruel”, Kane’s play favours emotional truth over clear storytelling conjuring the sensation of a mind muddled with trauma, love, craving, hope and hopelessness.

Premiering in 1998 at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Crave was the work that turned Kane’s critical reputation around. Prior to this, she had been known for staging shocking and extreme representations of sex and violence. Written under a pseudonym, Crave is noted for its poetic potency, non-linear style and openness to creative theatrical interpretation. Written without stage directions, with no orientation to time, place or gender, the text is deliberately vague. And this is its complete beauty – this theatrical canvas becomes a fertile ground for interpretation and invention.

This theatrical canvas becomes a fertile ground for interpretation and invention.

Presented by HER Productions, the performance features a cast of four performers who will each take a role ambiguously named as a single letter: Jake Ferretti as A, Etta Fusi as M, Matthew Heywood as B and Elizabeth Meddows as C.

Of the production, Director Chris Lawson told us, “It’s been an incredibly difficult couple of years for everyone, and especially painful for us in Oldham over the past few months. Whilst I’m still fighting for theatre in Oldham and supporting our team as we face redundancy together and begin to clear our building, directing Crave is medicinal. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of theatre to make us confront our emotions and begin to heal, and I’m really looking forward to getting back to what I love – making theatre.”