Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper was the first major play by Anthony Neilson. The show received it’s debut performance at Edinburgh’s Pleasance theater in August 1991. The play focuses on Dr. Wehner, a young defense lawyer, who attempts to prove Peter Kurten insane so that he may be spared the death penalty. Peter Kurten, the Düsseldorf Ripper, was an actual serial killer who terrorized Germany between February of 1929 and May of 1930, and was also the inspiration behind Fritz Lang’s 1931 film, M. Both Normal and M are set against the psychological geography of Weimar Germany, showcasing the decadence of a people as their life teeters on the edge of disaster. Entering this chamber of sexual and violent imagery is a lawyer armed with a liberal mindset that quickly becomes infected by Peter and Frau Kurten. Simultaneously set in a penny arcade, the home of Frau Kurten, a jail cell, and Wehner’s study, Normal blurs the distinction of setting until the play becomes a distilled memory of an aged Dr. Wehner. If you would like to find out more on Anthony Neilson or any other young writers performing in England during the British drama scene of the 1990s we suggest the essays compiled in In-Yer-Face Theater by Alecks Sierz.

Sarah Kane’s work has been seen in Buffalo once before with Lightsedge’s production of Crave. As a result, many in the audience will not be inexperienced with the author’s particularly grim vision. Blasted, Kane’s first work, professionally debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1995, where it was attacked by critics for being too shocking. However, Kane received a laudatory fan letter from perhaps the master of staged violence and the suspense precedes it, Harold Pinter, who was among the few to see it.

The setting is a posh hotel room in the Leeds section of Bosnia during the height of the Serbian conflict. Ian, an irascible Welsh journalist, has convinced, Cate, a twenty-one year old national, to spend the night with him. As Ian compulsively smokes and drinks gin, checking and rechecking his loaded gun, he works himself into a frenzy of nervous anger due to Cate’s simple manner and his own sexual frustration. She buckles under his pressure and has an occasional fit.

The night ends with a rape. The next morning Ian tries to induce Cate to stay, but the appearance of the Soldier shifts the power out of the journalist’s hands. There is an explosion and the streets below erupt into chaos as the play forsakes realism, the soldier becoming the master of the horrible destruction that ensues.