Production No.5 – CLEANSED

In an institution designed to rid society of its undesirables, a group of inmates try to save themselves through love. They go up against the sadistic Tinker, who makes them perform increasingly cruel experiments on themselves. What appears at first to be a deeply disturbing and violent play full of impossible stage directions turns out to be a touching search for love in a most hopeless place.

While Cleansed pushes the boundaries of what can be done on a stage, what makes it timeless is its simple, yet poetic language, which is put to the forefront in Max Jacoby’s minimalist staging. With one of the themes of the play being inmates slowly mutating into others, Danny Boland and Jacqueline Milne are each playing several characters. Their switching of personalities increasingly confuses Whitney Fortmueller’s Tinker and cumulates in a bloody expression of love.