PREAMBLE:

Author: Sarah Kane. (1971-1999) She was a young dramatist who commit suicide with 28 years old.

Title: Phaedra ´s Love.

Subtitle: A tragedy with eight scenes.

Publishing:-

Year of publication: This play was wrote in 1996.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

The characters are six:

Hippolytus: He, who is the main character, is a depressive person.

Doctor: Appears in the first scene and attends to Hyppolytus.

Phaedra: She is Hippolytus stepmother, who is in love with him. Also she commits suicide accusing Hippolytus of raping her.

Strophe: She is Phaedra´ s daughter and Hippolytus ´ stepsister who is killed by Hippolytus ´ father.

Priest: He is going to confess Hyppolytus at prison.

Theseus: He is Phaedra´s husband and Hippolytus´father who only appears in the last scene because he was far away of home.

Crowd including:

Man 1, woman 1, child, woman 2, man 2, policeman1, policeman 2.

PLOT:

Hippolytus is a depressed person. Phaedra, her stepmother, tells him she is in love with him and she performs oral sex on him. He rejects her, and she hangs herself, leaving a note accusing Hippolytus of rape. He is in a prison cell and a priest goes to confess to him. Theseus, Hippolytus ´ father, arrives at the funeral and sees as the crowd tries to kill Hippolytus. When Strophe tries to help Hippolytus, Theseus rapes and kills her. Hippolytus has his genitals cut off and thrown on a fire. Theseus recognise to Strophe and he commits suicide, also, Hippolytus died.

SCENERY:

Palace rooms, prison cell and the street.

TIME:

Now, that is the present ( in nineties).

CRITIC:

This play is a modern-day version of the classical Phaedra´ story by Seneca.

With its explicit violence, Kane's version breaks with the classical convention of describing rather than showing atrocity, but also includes another inversion of the original, by not staging Phaedra´ s suicide.

PERSONAL OPINION:

I think, first of all, this story concentrates more on Hippolytus than on Phaedra in spite of the title.

In my opinion, this play reflects a very pessimist point of view of the life and, that´ s why, we must having into account Kane commit suicide three years later.

I like this play very much because her critics are good, specially, when she describes the behaviour of the priest.

Ana Calatayud Moreno- Teatro Inglés de los siglos XIX y XX.