Crave is the fourth play by Sarah Kane, which premiered in 1998.
Compared to the other plays that Sarah wrote it was a shift in her style, in place of the graphic nature, Crave is a poetic series of four voices that express plan in love with deep issues haunting the four characters on stage.
The play takes on the issues of rape, incest, pedophilia, anorexia, drug addiction, mental instability, murder, and suicide. The Characters, are as minimal as possible with their names being nothing more than a single letter and the play has no setting or directions.The play is filled with literary allusions of The Bible and T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land among others.
Fearing that her name would affect the play's success, Sarah used the pseudonym "Marie Kelvedon", this play would be the last play to open in Sarah's lifetime.
The Play contains the following Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: C might have been abused by her Grandfather and Father and her Mother did nothing towards so she rejected her mother.
- Alphabetical Theme Naming: The characters are named only in the script and have only a single letter to say who they are A,B,C and M.
- Commitment Issues: Due to C's bad childhood she refuses A's desire for her.
- Creator Cameo: Sarah herself played "C" for a few performances.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Sarah was friends with Martin Crimp, his plays Attempts on her Life which is very similar in style to Crave.
- The play also has material from Sarah's pre-Blasted monolouges.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: A wants C to love him but she is unable to return it.
- Downer Ending: Well C dies and everyone will be affected by it.
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: Throughout the C is going down the slope until the end where despite the others unwilling to accept it, however once she does it the peace finally come.
- Heel–Face Turn: A spends the play wanting to be C's lover but she refuses however near the end he gives up on her just as she wants him.
- The "I Love You" Stigma: A loves C with all his heart, he has to prove it over and over but she can't return it, until of course near the end she starts to return it but the damage is done and A has moved on.
- Improv: Since there is no direction of what to do the director and cast need to do?
- Minimalism: The play has no direction, no setting and the characters names are only letters to represent themselves so nothing is set in stone.
- My God, What Have I Done?: B in the latter half of the play is playing C's Father who displays possible remorse for what he did and the fear she might die and his only way to accept it is to die himself.
- Parental Substitute: Both M and B represent the parents of C throughout the play.
- Pen Name: Sarah used the pen name "Marie Kelvedon", the name came from her middle name and the town she was raised in. She felt then the play wasn't tainted by her other plays and she even created a fictional biography for Marie.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The whole play has this feeling, it presents a depressed mind that desires nothing more for the madness to end.
- In fact some people have suggested that the whole play might not connect at all but be the verses of depression.
- Sex for Solace: M is a older woman that clearly is having sex while drunk for the reason she wants to be loved.
- Stalker with a Crush: A is stalking C but claims that he isn't.
- Shout-Out: This play has quite a few, lyrics from songs and even a line from The Tibetan Book of the Dead:
- No doubt like Cleansed, the play can be seen as a look at A Lover's Discourse.
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder's play Pre-Paradise Sorry Now, inspired the first draft.
- The line "a Vietnamese girl..." is a reference to the Napalm girl Photograph
- Samuel Beckett's iconic Waiting for Godot and his later plays have been noticed in the Crave.
- The play has quotes from Hamlet, The Bible, T. S. Eliot The Waste Land and Aleister Crowley. note
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: All the characters have problems that make you hate them then feel sorry for them.
