10 favorite albums

In these days of iTunes and streaming music, the album has almost become a lost art. Oh, they’re still being released but there’s a feeling that it’s all just an arbitrary grab-bag, and people will take what they want and leave the rest. A song here, and a song there. And that antiquated notion of a “concept album”? Forget about it!  Well, I personally love the construct of an album. In fact, when I write original song lyrics, I often group them into imaginary “albums” and that makes it so much more meaningful to me. Sure, there are usually “duds” on every album, songs that you tend to skip. But at least you have a chance to become acquainted with them before you skip them. There is a beautiful art to how one song can lead into another and guide the thoughts and emotions of the listener, to take them on a journey that they would miss if they only downloaded one or two songs from the collection. So with that in mind, I offer some thoughts on ten of my favorite albums. It’s not really a top ten list, in that favorites have a way of changing, and these will not be presented in any particular order. And there is a lot of great work that will not be included in this list because I can’t write a 100-page blog entry. So this is just a sampling of really good albums, and I hope some of you might consider giving some of them a listen from start to finish.

JOHN MELLENCAMP: LIFE, DEATH, LOVE AND FREEDOM (2009)

As a huge Mellencamp fan from way back, I could have chosen any one of four or five different releases, but the one I’m listening to the most right now is this recording, his first collaboration with roots music icon T Bone Burnett. This marked a turning point for the artist, moving away from rock and towards an eclectic mix of folk, country, blues and Americana. Others that followed this album have not been as strong. The songwriting is exquisite in its melodies, instrumentation, and lyrical themes. It’s pretty downbeat, but that’s nothing new for Mellencamp. There is the dark humor of “John Cockers” about a crotchety old loner: “I used to have some values / now they just make me laugh / I used to think things would work out fine / but they never did do that.” This is followed by “A Ride Back Home”, which is a sad appeal to Jesus to end the singer’s failed earthly life and take him to heaven early. Then you arrive at “Jena”, which is about an actual racist incident that occurred in a Southern town of the same name, and “Mean” which seems to be about the religious right. “County Fair” is a ghost story of sorts, with the protagonist matter-of-factly detailing his final hours on this earth before he is senselessly murdered. Yet in spite of all the morbidity, there are fragments of sweetness and light, as “For the Children” is a kind of blessing bestowed upon the next generation by someone who admits that he doesn’t understand this life at all, but he has hope anyway. And “My Sweet Love” is one of the most catchy love songs you’ll ever hear.

KATE BUSH: THE DREAMING (1982)

Kate Bush blossomed into full musical maturity and creative genius with this trippy album. Before, she was fairly subdued, a shy-sounding teenage girl, in spite of her more animated onstage persona, which reflected a rich dance background. While she could always be described as a wee bit eccentric, this album took that quirk over the edge and took the listeners into flights of fancy that they never could have previously imagined. While not exactly a hit, “Suspended in Gaffa” is one of the most infectious and addictive tunes in her arsenal. She takes you around the world with “Pull Out the Pin”, a mediation on the violence of the Vietnam war from the perspective of the Vietcong. The title song takes you to Australia to witness the Aborigines getting swept off their land by the white man. “Night of the Swallow” is a heart-wrenching plea of a woman trying to keep her over-confident loved one from embarking on a deadly mission. Most captivating of all though is a pairing of songs, “Leave It Open” and “Get Out of My House”, both occupying the end of the two “sides” of the record. They are both ominous and cautionary reflections on the forces we allow to enter into our life, and what we try to keep out. In a way, they almost contradict each other, and at the same time compliment, like two sides of the same coin. The latter track ends in a spectacularly spooky and hysterical fashion, as Kate transforms into a mule. You can’t miss this.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK: EYE (1990)

When Robyn Hitchcock has a band backing him up in the studio (the Soft Boys, the Egyptians, the Venus 3), the songs tend to be very poppy and accessible. Oh, there is still the macabre and surreal imagery that his lyrics are known for, but the music tends to be radio friendly, even if the record labels and radio stations are not friendly back. But when Hitchcock goes solo, we have something very different. The songs tend to be quite stripped down, and consist mostly of an acoustic guitar and his raspy English vocals. The production is not smooth at all; some songs end quite abruptly and in unexpected ways. The lyrics are even more edgy than normal, yet with an insanely dark cackling-clown sense of humor. Take “Executioner” (“I know how Judas felt / but he got paid / I’m doing this for free / just like Live Aid”) or “Aquarium”: (“She says she’s gonna saw her head off / she only does it for attention”). Perhaps one of the most cosmically strange and funny songs of his entire massive oeuvre is “Clean Steve”, which I won’t quote here cos you just have to hear it for yourself. There’s also great tenderness on the album as he exposes his heart in the mortality meditation of “Glass Hotel” and the bitter breakup dirge, “Linctus House.” This is a moody album, and I listen to it when I’m, well, moody. “Should I say it with flowers, or should I say it with nails?” – “Linctus House”

HOWIE DAY: STOP ALL THE WORLD NOW (2003)

The original title was going to be From a Northern Sky, which would have been a much stronger title, and very evocative. Several songs would have hinted back to it in their lyrics. But that’s a small matter. Day has said he was influenced by Jeff Buckley on this album, and I can see that, although I find Day’s music to be more accessible than Buckley’s, and no less dramatic or well crafted. This is an artist who wears his heart on his sleeve, and that’s probably why I love him so much. Every track is infused with an intensity of emotion, as if the survival of the world itself hinged on whatever he’s singing about (which, incidentally, is usually love). Maybe that explains the album title. “Brace Yourself” is a warning to potential romantic interests, as if to say, “When I fall in love, I become a powerful and unpredictable force of nature”. There’s an earnestness in these songs that confronts the dangers of love and passion, as well as the beauty and tenderness. Arguably, the most powerful song on the album is “End of Our Days”, which was featured prominently in the 2006 documentary The Bridge, about the world’s most popular place to commit suicide, the Golden Gate Bridge. While I don’t think suicide is actually the subject of the song, there is such a depth to the feeling expressed in both words and melody that the filmmakers obviously thought it had the gravitas to capture the film’s dark tone, which actually featured live footage of real people jumping to their deaths.

THE WHITE STRIPES: ICKY THUMP (2007)

Jack White and his cohort Meg White (not siblings, but formerly married) made their blues-rock fusion mark on the world with six studio albums in eight years. Then they wrapped it all up with a Canadian tour and accompanying film (Under Great White Northern Lights, excellent, by the way) and then went their separate ways. My opinion, which I think is a rare one among fans, is that they got better with each album. Their first one was the worst one, and their last one, Icky Thump, was the best. I first heard the title track in my friend Holly’s car, riding home from film school one night, and it was revelatory. There are many guitarists I admire, but the authority and confidence with which Jack played on this song struck me like a bolt of lightning. And then you add the in-your-face lyrics: “White Americans, what? Nothing better to do? Why don’t you kick yourself out – you’re an immigrant too.” Just…wow. The rest of the album follows almost as strongly as that opener. The searing “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues” lets us into one of those uncomfortable relationship conversations that we all have, and between verses, breaks out into brain-piercing guitar noise that sounds like people playing with assorted saws to punctuate the emotional intensity of the proceedings. “Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn” has Jack experimenting with bagpipes, much the same way he played with marimba in the previous album. There’s a slight lag in the second half, but the record closes with a light-hearted exhortation towards taking ownership and personal responsibility (“Effect and Cause”). I hate that The White Stripes had to end it, but since they did, it’s wonderful they did so on this high note.

DIRE STRAITS: LOVE OVER GOLD (1982)

This is for people who love the guitar and love storytelling. In its five long tracks (one of them nearly 15 minutes in length), we get a lot of both. These are what Mark Knopfler traffic in. Stories of love (mostly lost), stories of corruption, stories of locations in time(s). You take it all in with Knopfler propelling you through the songs in long instrumental sessions both gentle and fierce. It’s always beautiful though, and the 3-minute guitar solo that closes “It Never Rains” is my favorite guitar solo, period.

BILLY JOEL: SONGS IN THE ATTIC (1981)

Before Joel hit it big in 1977 with The Stranger, he recorded four lackluster albums with not a lot of artistic control over the proceedings. He wrote the songs, of course, and sang and played piano, but the production and musicianship by the hired guns were not up to the level of Joel’s songwriting craft. So, in the early 80’s, he released one of the only live albums I actually like, an album that takes the best material from those early works and revitalizes it in a live setting. The result is a stunning revelation of just how good a songwriter he was to begin with, and the potential that those songs had. The most staggering example of this improvement is “Captain Jack”, the cautionary tale of young restlessness (and recklessness) and drug addiction. This was actually released in its original version in 1973 and was a hit; that was the version that was later put on the Greatest Hits compilation. But the Attic version is infinitely better; when he launches into the final chorus, the anger is palpable, and if you think Billy Joel is a bubblegum artist with nothing to say, you’ll never feel that way again. Other standout tracks are “Streetlife Serenader” and “Summer, Highland Falls.” These are thoughtful, meditative, reflective tracks that were written and recorded before Joel became a hit-making machine. Their place is in our hearts, rather than on the charts.

FLEETWOOD MAC: TUSK (1979)

You may wonder what was going through the mind of singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer Lindsey Buckingham when he steered the band on this sharp left turn from their mega-hit breakthrough Rumours from 1977. Tusk is nothing like Rumours, not in the slightest. It was a commercial failure and disappointment at the time, but now it enjoys a unique following as something of a cult favorite. Like most Mac albums with this particular lineup, it features contributions from Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie as well as Buckingham. But Buckingham dominates with the lion’s share of the songs on this double-album, and the songs are…well…different. I don’t know what he was listening to at the time, but it wasn’t Mac contemporaries like the Eagles! The songs are wild and frenetic and sometimes rather incomprehensible. Nicks does her usual heart-pouring therapy sessions, but really takes it up a notch on the epic “Sara”. She also contributes the most hard-edged and mysterious track on the album, “Sisters of the Moon”, which is the band as close as it gets to hard rock. (I can imagine a heavy metal cover of this, it would be great.) And for McVie’s part, while she is sometimes the weakest link, her songs of love and romantic passion are enough to make the heart melt. She is at her best of this album.

SUZANNE VEGA: DAYS OF OPEN HAND (1990)

This album was sort of a transition between the soft folk of her 80’s offerings and the more electronic-oriented music that would come later. What is really compelling about this album is how introspective the songs are. And many of them, I can relate to on a deeply personal level. Take the opener: “Oh Mom, I wonder when I’ll be waking. It’s just that there’s so much to do and I’m tired of sleeping.” Two songs later, on “Rusted Pipe”, she sings of tentative beginnings: “Now the time has come to speak. I was not able. And water through a rusted pipe could make the sense that I do.” She runs a gamut of human experience, from dreaming (“Book of Dreams”) to civic duty (“Institution Green”) to the complex nature of communication (“Big Space”) to a harrowing medical crisis (“50/50 Chance”) and finally the long spiritual journey that is life itself (“Pilgrimage”). Many times, I have made mix tapes to express who I am, and at least one song from this album would usually be included. Many times, I’ve felt like “I could have written this!”

U2: THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE (1984)

This is a unique collection of songs that were largely inspired by a visit to a peace museum, and witnessing its various displays. So you have two songs about Martin Luther King Jr (actually the weakest tracks on the album, not because of their subject but because of less imaginative musical choices). You have love songs set in the backdrop of nuclear devastation, after a series of paintings made by survivors from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The band actually took the name for the album from that painting exhibit.) There’s a song about the decline of Elvis and, in a larger sense, of America. There are two songs about drug addiction in Dublin. And there is a really sweet love song, one of my all-time favorites that I want played at my wedding (if I ever have one), “Promenade”. All this may not sound very enticing, but it’s the music that really shines here, as it captures this mixture of very serious and dramatic topics. One thing that stands out much more than usual is Adam Clayton’s bass, throbbing underneath Edge’s melodic guitar rhythms and unusual frenetic outbursts. Bono sings with his usual solemnity, but here it doesn’t come across as pretentious or preachy like it does on, say, The Joshua Tree. You hear the heart of a man weeping for humanity’s suffering, and there’s a universality to it that is unmatched on any other U2 album in spite of such specific subject matter. The highpoint is the title track, which ends with a lovely orchestral coda that will leave you breathless, speechless, or both. And by the way, the video that was made for that song is my absolute favorite music video ever. It’s as powerful as the song itself. 

American Crime (season two)

I’m not sure at exactly what point cable networks took over episodic television, but ever since, it’s been nearly impossible for the old giants to reclaim their viewership. Why watch ABC, NBC, or CBS when you’ve got Game of Thrones on HBO, House of Cards on Netflix, Fargo on FX, Bates Motel on A&E? (BTW, mentioning those shows doesn’t mean I watch them all.) But this winter, something truly exceptional, one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my 42 years on planet, aired, and it was on ABC. It was called American Crime, and you most likely missed it.

To be specific, it was season 2 that aired this winter. Like Fargo, and American Horror Story (I hear), this show is completely different every season. Not only a new story, but all new characters, although some are played by actors who were also in the first season. You could call it “repertory TV drama”. It was created by the writer of the Academy Award winning film, 12 Years a Slave, John Ridley, who also wrote and directed a number of the episodes, along with other A-listers like Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) and Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin). And one final technical note, this is not the docudrama about OJ Simpson; that show is called American Crime Story. So just to get it straight, there’s no “Story” in the title of what I’m writing about here.

American Crime has two Indiana high schools as its backdrop. One is an elite private school, run by the cold and calculating Leslie Graham, played with supreme subtly by Felicity Huffman. The other is a somewhat run-down budget-poor public school, where there are constant tensions between the black and Hispanic populations. Chris Dixon (Elvis Nolasto, in what is truly one of the most sympathetic adult portrayals in this story) tries to keep things functioning and keep a lid on the tensions, which turns out to be a thankless and impossible task.

A scandal breaks out at the private school. Social outcast Taylor Blain (played by Falling Skies alum, Connor Jessup) shows up at a party, hosted by the captain of the basketball team. There, he has a sexual encounter with Eric Tanner (Joey Pollari), another member of the basketball team. Throughout the show, the exact nature and details of this encounter are never revealed, but in the next few days, photos of a passed-out and half naked Taylor are spread across the school, and Taylor will confess to his mom (the always-incredible Lili Taylor) that he was raped. Eric meanwhile is outed at his school, partially shunned, and completely denies that he did anything that Taylor didn’t want.

It’s necessary for me to take a moment to praise these two young actors, Jessup and Pollari, because while the show is full of extraordinary performances all around, it is these two that do the majority of the heavy lifting and are responsible for driving that emotional stake into the heart of the viewer. Here are two young, confused gay kids, living in a small town America that is much less accepting than you might imagine in 2016. Taylor is shy, sensitive, and under-stated. As his troubles get deeper and deeper, he withdraws further into himself, until he reaches a breaking point.  Eric is a young man who wants to project a very tough masculine exterior, and it gets harder and harder as the pressure mounts throughout the series. Taylor has a hard time expressing his thoughts and feelings, and yet in his pauses, you can see the painful truth in his eyes. I’m reminded of that song, “you say it best when you say nothing at all.” A lot of actors of any age have a hard time communicating their characters like this, and that’s why Connor Jessup is so amazing here. And look, his character is no angel, which becomes more apparent as the show progresses, but you love him and want to protect him as much as his mother does because of the empathy that Jessup creates for Taylor. It becomes a high stakes proposition for the viewer, as you rush to the television set every week to see what happens. You almost pray that everything works out okay, even though you know it’s fiction. As for Pollari, his smoldering portrayal of the angry-but-damaged Eric will make you almost as concerned for him as for Taylor…almost. He is like a caged animal, imprisoned by his anger and his recklessness. He does things that could get him killed. Pollari expertly finds the balance between the macho that Eric so wants to be and the deep wounded vulnerability that is his true heart.

Huffman’s private school headmaster only wants to bury the scandal and does everything in her power to silence the Blains, with devastating results. The basketball coach, played by Timothy Hutton (who is somehow always likable, no matter what character he’s playing) just wants to protect his team and preserve the notion of camaraderie, which means burying his head in the sand. Unlike the Huffman character, Hutton’s coach is almost always a man of good intentions, but they don’t get him very far because the good intentions are not matched with genuine courage and strength of character. And indeed, one of the themes of season two of American Crime is how children suffer at the hands of adults (their parents, teachers, so-called role models) who care more about their own institutions than about people. And in many cases, parents care only for their own kids, and are willing to throw other children under the bus to protect theirs.

One primary example is the LaCroix family, an affluent black community pillar, the youngest of whom, Kevin, is the basketball team’s captain. His parents witness the community falling apart around them over this scandal, and their only thought is to protect their son, no matter what his involvement in the incident might be. One especially noteworthy performance is by Regina King, as mother Terri, who is like a lioness, protecting her cub…And yet, at the same time, Terri experiences a real character evolution during these ten episodes. She goes from scolding her son for letting Eric take the winning basket in a game and railing against Taylor’s mom, blaming her for all the town’s troubles to taking ownership of her own mistakes, and urging her husband and son to do the same. It’s an incredibly strong performance, which—like Jessop’s and Pollari’s—should be nominated for an Emmy.

Meanwhile, back at the public school, as I said before, black kids and Hispanic kids seem to be hating on each other, and the school board, which is a multi-ethnic conglomerate, just like the school itself, has the so-called adults exploiting the tensions to jockey for power and position, and the sad-sack black principle is getting railroaded amid accusations of racism against the Hispanics. Where education and politics converge, politics will always win out. There are some connections between the goings-on at this school and the more central private school storyline. Eric’s less promising younger brother goes here, and Taylor transfers here from the private school after the rape.

I’m about to go into spoiler territory, so if you want to watch this and don’t want anything more given away, you should not read past this paragraph. My comments above barely scratch the surface of why this is a vital program that I think everyone should watch, even if they think it’s not necessarily their cup of tea. Like so few other programs, it reveals the real complexity of human nature, where nobody is good, and nobody is evil. Everyone has real and difficult issues that they deal with. It’s like that Facebook meme you see one in a while, I’ll try to paraphrase it: “Don’t judge people too quickly, because everyone is fighting a secret battle that you know nothing about.” Okay, I think I butchered that, but you get the idea. There are so many twists and turns and surprises. There is so much that is fresh and innovative here. If there were more things like this produced, I might not feel the need to be an artist myself. The need derives (possibly, one theory anyway) from a sense of something lacking out there. This is what art should be. This is what you should be watching. Trust Uncle Matt.

Okay, spoilers…not just for the sake of plot reveals, but the necessary discussion that must follow. For Taylor Blain, when it rains, it pours. Like many victims of sexual assault (and one of the things you learn is that male on male rape is much more common than you think), he just wants to put it behind him. But then there are the viral photos. Then his mom pursues justice, even when he’d rather she not. For her trouble, her past with mental illness is brought to light. Taylor loses his girlfriend when he’s outed as gay, which is a big deal simply because he needs moral support, and her anger prevents her from being there for him. Taylor gets the shit beat out of him for damaging the reputation of the prized basketball team. Taylor takes drugs to ease the pain. Taylor borrows a gun from his grandfather, and takes it to school with a hit list full of people, the top of which is Leslie Graham, the headmaster, who has done nothing but try to demonize him and his mother from the start. A compassionate secretary talks him down without even realizing it, but as Taylor is leaving the school, having committed no violence, he’s confronted and threatened by one of the jocks who beat him up. “If you say anything, I’ll kill you!” says Wes the jock. In a moment of panic, Taylor sees to it that Wes is the one that ends up dead.

Of the many, many hot-button issues that this show addresses, none is more relevant than the issue of school shootings. And while there have been many shows and films and even plays—I wrote one myself—that deal with this important subject, the approach taken here is somewhat different from what we’ve seen. In the first place, the shooting was not the premeditated one that Taylor had in mind when he came to school that day. It happened in a moment of shock and could therefore be described almost as accidental, which is why Taylor is charged with manslaughter and not murder. Add to that, the sympathetic nature of Taylor’s character and situation, and the fact that the bully Wes—while not deserving to die—was a truer villain than Taylor throughout most of the show. It’s very bold and unprecedented that a work of fiction would generate sympathy for a school shooter, but it goes back to what I said before about how complicated people are and life in general, and the situations we find ourselves in, our private battles that other people don’t know about. Some might not want a school shooter to be cast in anything but the most monstrous light because the problem is so pervasive in our society. Is it dangerous to try to understand the monster’s point of view? Or, even worse, to show that he isn’t even a monster at all?

I was bullied mercilessly in junior high. The late 80s was a time before Columbine, and when I wrote my imaginary hit list, and had to pass it forward to my math teacher who read it aloud, I was not suspended or even given a talking-to. I was not taken seriously. And truth be told, I wasn’t serious; it was a “cry for help”, as they say, but it fell on deaf ears. And so many years later, even with what we know now, there are many with willfully deaf ears and blind eyes. When everybody looks out for number one, they forget that the ostracized kid they’re ignoring might be the one who can tear their precious world apart.

This ten-episode story was deliberately devoid of resolutions. Taylor is given a chance to make a plea deal to lessen his sentence, but we don’t find out if he does so. Eric is seen about to jump into another stranger’s car for an anonymous hookup, which has proven to be dangerous in the past, but he takes a pause, wondering if he really wants to go through with it. We don’t know what happens. We don’t find out the truth about the night that changed Eric and Taylor’s lives forever, but we do know they both believe their own accounts of what happened. We can draw our own conclusions.  

Blasted

The truth is, I’m not easily shocked. At least not in terms of what’s on the stage or screen. I may be disturbed by something; that’s different. I’m an emotional guy, full of empathy and compassion, so it is possible to move me. And that’s what I found with Defunkt Theatre’s production of Sarah Kane’s first pivotal play, Blasted: I was moved, but I wasn’t shocked.

Not that it’s important to be. It’s just that I read a lot of material about the play before seeing it, and I also was familiar with Kane’s pitch black dramatic suicide note, 4.48 Psychosis, which Defunkt staged a few years ago, all leading me to think I was going to get a real gut punch, which did not exactly happen for me. Maybe it’s because of my own dark imagination, or things I’ve already produced myself (Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class and Prince Gomovilas’ adaptation of Scott Heim’s novel, Mysterious Skin, both feature the same kind of dark and gritty realism as Kane’s play). And yet, even though I was completely prepared for everything I saw, it was nonetheless a very powerful show.

What I don’t want to do here is reveal much of what happens in the story, because I think that’s what nearly spoiled it for me. The reviews told me everything that happens, as if they thought audiences needed a very detailed and specific warning. This was a real disservice. Suffice to say, it isn’t for the faint of heart. But that’s all. Let me let you discover it for yourself.

However, here’s some non-spoiler stuff about the plot:  Basically, a man and a woman who have a history together but are not particularly simpatico, get a hotel room for the night. They quarrel over a number of issues, mainly sex and the man’s raving bigotry and paranoia. The man is dying, and the woman seems to have a disorder that involves fits of laughter, followed by fainting. There is some abuse that takes place. And yet, the man (he has a name—Ian—and he’s played by a very capable and committed Matt Smith) is more pathetic than villainous. He suffers painfully in the face of the ticking clock of his mortality. It seems like he’s trying to do more than satisfy his various cravings (gin, cigarettes, food and sex); there’s a sense that he wants to preserve his dignity, and yet his lusts seem to thwart this effort every time. The woman (Cate, played by Elizabeth Parker as both childlike and full of mystery), for her part, waffles back and forth from genuine affection and interest for Ian, to disgust and contempt.

And then something unexpected happens. Suddenly we find out we’re in a war zone, and the hotel room become like its own corner of hell, and the crazy soldier who shows up unannounced proves, in his demonic cruelty, to fit right in.

That’s all the story I’m going to share. This production makes maximum use of excellent lighting and sound designs (by Cassie Skauge and Gordon Romei, respectively) to create the feeling of menace that permeates the proceedings. During the blackouts, it’s really black. You can’t see a thing. But you hear this most ominous sounding rainfall, like it’s nails pouring out of the sky, instead of water. And when the lights come back up (after not too long, I might add), the stage is dramatically changed, and you really do wonder how did they do that?

As usual, I sat in the front row, and everything felt so much more real and palpable than you necessarily want it to in a show like this. I got Ian’s bare ass staring at me just a couple feet away. When I heard him coughing and wheezing from his terminal condition, I actually wanted to move to the back of the theatre because I felt worried I might catch something, even though the rational part of my brain knew this was just a sick character. I actually don’t recommend sitting in the front row, but rather up some levels because the risers still allow for good sightlines, and my view of certain key moments was blocked because I had a big center-stage bed in front of me.

On an entirely personal note, part of my trepidation in seeing this play has to do with knowing the story of playwright Sarah Kane, who was brought up in a devout Christian household, only to abandon her faith later in life. As a Christian man, it makes sense to me that a loss of faith would be followed by spiraling despair. She attributed the violent content of Blasted, in part, to the violence of the Bible, and while I whole-heartedly admit that the Bible has a great deal of brutality in its pages, I could not really see the connection between the violence found in the scriptures, and the events unfolding in this play.

But back to the pertinent discussion of this play. Bottom line:  Defunkt Theatre has taken a very challenging work and has run with it, fully committed, nothing halfway, no holds barred, complete honesty and integrity in every aspect of the production. But this is their MO; this is what they do. This is why they’ve become a nationally renowned theatre company, known for its boldness and powerful work. If they can take a play like this, which is about as rife with challenges and obstacles as you can get, and do it so expertly, one wonders if they can do wrong at all.