'Love me or kill me': Sarah Kane and the theatre of extremes (Theatre: Theory – Practice – Performance)

Very nice detail - both on her plays and on her reactions to the plays. Always liked Kane, since I first saw Blasted. It's been really useful for my students as well to get a good overview.

Amazing book! Very useful for my Master degree. Well done to the seller!

After using this in one of my essays on contemporary playwrights by lecturer made a point of hunting me down just so that he could tell me well done! I started writing an essay on Sarah Kane only to find that there is virtually nothing written about her or her work! THankfully this book is pretty much exhaustive and was an absolute saviour for me! It is really interesting, and covers a lot of different aspects. There is a chapter on each play, including 4.48 Psychosis which is new enough to never be referred to in academic reading! As well as analysing her work there are also several chapters based round interviews with friends and people that she worked with, as well as reviews and comments on the first performance! If you like Sarah Kane then this is brillaint, if you're easily shocked then I wouldn't because Kane wasn't shy about what she wrote!

If you like or are studying Kane then this book is essential. Its also a fantastic aid for experimental in-yer-face theatre as it comments not only on the specifics of Kane's work, but gives details of how performances were staged, providing glimpses and ideas for visualising plays with minimal stage and character descriptions, like Martin Crimp's work for instance. I used this as a secondary source for my dissertation and it became a sort of bible. I've never regretted buying it.

No doubt Sarah Kane will attract much attention from students over the next few years as the forerunner of the 'in yer face' sensibility and one of the least studied and most talked about playwrights of the 20th century. Thankfully Sauders' comprehensive study is a very useful work to fill the academic void that surrounds this important playwright. It gives useful background, influences and reactions to all of Kane's plays in significant depth. It also includes many useful interviews and the introduction shows great insight into the state of British theatre during the 1990s. If you are a fan of Sarah Kane, or want to write an essay on her then currently this is by far the most important work to read.