Adam Ludwig, Stephanie Janssen, Rishabh Kashyap, Stephanie Strohm
It is well-nigh impossible to hear Sarah Kane's aching meditation on the cravings for love, connection, and understanding minus the static bred by her suicide several months after the piece was written. But it is important to do so in order to judge the work as theatre.
Four voices, labeled A, M, B, and C (Adam Ludwig, Stephanie Janssen, Rishabh Kashyap, and Stephanie Strohm), sit in four chairs under occasionally shifted lighting and, in choral concert, interweave tales of yearnings for linkage, as if the default state of life is sadness and disconnect.
But "Crave" is not really a play, if by "play" is meant a narrative of change, revelation, reversal, conflict, "high stakes," and so on, and because of its non-play structure, all is told, not shown, over a hour's time, which makes "Crave" a presentation more for the ear than the eye. As a consequence, its poetic earnestness, despite the talented efforts of director Cheryl Faraone and cast, becomes tedious and, in its tediousness, ironically reinforces the disconnect that A, M, B, and C (and Kane) struggle to nullify through their sad and lonely chorus.
(July 2008)