Constant Craving

On Friday night Seattlest caught the Washington Ensemble Theatre's production of Crave. Not to be confused with one of our favorite restaurants in town, this play is the handicraft of Sarah Kane, a brilliant, troubled artist who spat out five intense and violent works before hanging herself at age 28. The marketing we've seen for the play would like you to think that the play is "sexy and brutal." Make no mistake---this play is definitely brutal, but focusing on the topic of sex does not automatically make something sexy. Crave is certainly anything but.

From our recollections of previous visits to the Little Theatre, the already-intimate theatre space had been further closed off with heavily textured white walls, making the space feel even smaller and more claustrophobic. Meanwhile, the stage had been letterboxed, such that the audience was unable to see the bottom third. It was in this setting that WET's production began with the lights out. As our eyes adjusted to the dark and the lighting slowly grew brighter, we could make out four figures on the stage, four figures standing side by side, staring out into the audience. It's more than a bit startling, an effect that is fully intentional. Then the piece began and the four nameless characters (designated as C, M, A, and B, though they are never referred to by these monikers) started their intersecting rants on lust, love, hate, and everything in between.

Kane wrote the play without stage directions, only words. For this reason, Crave is often performed as a group monologue with the actors seated. However, visiting director Roger Benington had the brilliant idea to have the actors actually do something. So rather than merely reciting their lines, they're running back and forth, climbing the walls as well as fellow cast members, ducking in and out of view, and oscillating between clinging to each other and desperately trying to get away.

The play delves into myriad types of relationships: mother-daughter, husband-wife, therapist-patient, attacker-victim, hunter-hunted, empty womb-sperm donor. This is also a piece about some Big Dark Topics: pedophilia, rape, incest, suicide, eating disorders, alcoholism, and pathological obsession. More than anything, we'd like to think it's a portrait of self-hatred.

But despite everything we've just said the piece is really, really darkly funny. It's eminently quotable, with scads of great cynical lines that we couldn't help but find humorous. Like when Marc Kenison introduces himself via the line "I'm not a rapist---I'm a pedophile." Or when Marya Sea Kaminski fends off her boozehound lover by telling him "There's something deeply unflattering about being desired by someone who is so drunk he can't see." Later, the scorned fellow (Lathrop Walker) informs her, "There is a difference between articulacy and intelligence. [beat] I know there is, but I can't articulate it." Then there's this great long obsessive rant. We just love wordy stuff like that. The other actress (Mikano Fukaya) is at the center of the piece (often quite literally), but we weren't as taken by her performance. Maybe that's because she didn't get many of what we considered the best lines.

As the play progresses, the floor of the stage slowly fills with water. At first, Seattlest didn't even pay attention to this development. We were thinking it was just a sound effect, since we couldn't see the lower part of the stage. But no, somehow---and we don't have a clue how exactly this feat was engineered, but we'd like to give mad props to everyone involved---they gradually covered the stage floor with water. So now, the cast was running back and forth, popping up and down, rolling around, and getting soaked...to the extent that post-play, the actors towelled off and put on terry cloth robes. WET got wet: an impressive touch that gave this intense piece even more resonance.

Crave is closing October 3rd, so you've only got a week left before it's gone. Get tickets.

WET @ The Little Theatre
608 19th Ave E (between Mercer and Roy)
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday performances at 8pm; Sunday at 7pm