Phaidras love

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Phaidra's Love is the second play by British playwright Sarah Kane . It premiered in 1996 at London's Gate Theater, directed by the author.

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Dramatis personae are Theseus , his wife Phaidra, their children Hippolytus and Strophe, a priest and a doctor. The play is divided into eight scenes, it takes place at the royal palace of Theseus. Theseus is at war. Hippolytos is the television, food and sex addicted stepson Phaidras, who is in love with him. On his birthday she gives him her sexual devotion, which he accepts after some hesitation. At the same time, he hurts her by mentioning the fact that he too had sex with Verse, his stepsister. Phaidra commits suicide . In her suicide note, she accuses Hippolytus of rape. He is then taken into custody and is to be executed. A doctor and a priest strive for his physical and spiritual salvation, whereby the priest also falls for the attractive Hippolytos and has oral sex with him. On the day of the execution, Theseus returns to the city, vows to take revenge on his son, rapes his own daughter Strophe, who is disguised as him. Theseus slits her throat. After recognizing his victim as a stanza and Hippolytus is dying, he slits his own throat as well. Hippolytus is lynched by the pack waiting to be executed and experiences for the only time in his life the variety he has always longed for.

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Sarah Kane takes up the ancient Phaidra myth and processes it in an extreme form. Hippolytus is portrayed as a jaded object of society that will eventually execute him for living out the values ​​it has imparted to him. His stepmother's love is marked by despair and sacrifice until death; she finally fulfills his longing for excitement through her own death. Sarah Kane remains true to her theme of love and its limits and shows the violence, despair and cruelty of the family and society.

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Phaidra's love is the only piece of Sarah Kane that seems to show some kind of humor. The lethargic way of portraying the greatest cruelty hit British black humor. In the portrayal of the two extremes Hippolytos and Phaidra, Phaidra's love was rated by Sarah Kane as the most clearly understandable piece in its polarity.