Cleansed is Kane’s third play first performed in 1998 at the Royal Court Downstairs in London (Aston 78). It is the story of four odd couples’ relationship set at a university which is more like an asylum, or better to say a concentration camp ruled under the control of a sadistic doctor/torturer Tinker. The episodic structure of the play carries out the entangled psychological struggle of seven characters coupled as Grace/Graham, Grace/Robin, Carl/Rod, Grace/Tinker, and Tinker/Woman. Six months after his addicted brother’s death in an asylum/university/camp, Grace has come to ask Tinker, the doctor/torturer, to give her back Graham’s clothes that are now Robin’s, a nineteen year- old boy. From the moment they exchange their clothes, she thinks she looks and sounds like Graham to such an …show more content…
Soon, Robin falls for her though she cannot accept his love since she is in love with her beloved/brother Graham. As they speak, Graham is always present and even his voice is being heard accompanying Grace’s or Robin’s in a way it creates the illusion of him metamorphosed in their bodies. During the whole time, Tinker is watching them, as he also watches a gay couple, Carl/Rod. However, Tinker is more than just a watcher; he takes sadistic violent actions as if to test the honesty of their love. His most brutal actions are taken towards Carl, the feminine male of the gay couple; in different phases of the play, he first cuts his tongue, then his hands, his legs, and finally his genitals. Even more, despite Rod’s growing eagerness to their love, Tinker cuts rod’s throat in front of his eyes. He tortures Grace as well, ordering some Voices to beat her, rape her, crack her body, and shoot her against the wall though she does not die. He cuts her breasts and replaces her genitals with that of Carl to fulfill her desire of not being a