Horrors haunt the text of Crave, the 1998 play by Sarah Kane in which four individuals (named A, B, C and M) speak in fragmented voices about the traumas that have left them damaged and bereft. Rape, madness and a hint of paedophilic abuse are present in their stories. And when Julie Cunningham announced her decision to create a danced adaptation of the play, you couldn’t help but imagine its potential for physical excess.
Cunningham doesn’t so much translate the text into dance as create a new element in which its words can move and breathe. Her subtle, evocative strategy is to have the four female dancers circling and mirroring the four female actors as they perform their roles. Sometimes the choreography animates the space between the performers: angular clusters of dance that curdle the atmosphere, or drawn-out balances suggestive of quiet desolation. Sometimes it echoes the cadences of the text, catching its glimmers of wit and its drifting uncertainties.
On rare occasions, it becomes an active player. As Anna Martine Freeman relives A’s thwarted love affair, Cunningham butts and pummels her violently, becoming both adversary and alter ego.
If there’s a flaw in this finely conceived production, it’s mostly due to issues in the text, as its final 10 minutes circle through a series of false endings, and Kane’s complex, compelling characters can feel like burdensome company. But Cunningham creates her own powerful coda as, one by one, the woman exit the space and two dancers remain – each locked in a solitary space but seeking out one last ray of light on the darkening stage.
- At the Barbican, London, until 13 May. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
