Summary
When Ian answers the phone, he launches into a monologue, a dictation of an article he is writing about a serial killer. He is evidently a journalist. He reports on a 19-year-old British tourist Samantha Scrace who was killed in a "sick murder ritual" while traveling in New Zealand, stabbed more than 20 times, "buried in identical triangular tombs."
Ian finishes dictating the story, laughs, then says, "That one again, I went to see her. Scouse tart, spread her legs." When he hangs up, Cate asks him how "they" know he's here, and he tells her he told them "in case they needed me." He calls to room service and orders another bottle of gin.
"We always used to go to yours," Cate says, to which Ian replies, "That was years ago. You've grown up." He begins touching Cate's breast under her shirt and masturbating. As she undoes her shirt, she pushes him away and tells him she doesn't want to have sex. "You're nervous, that's all," Ian says, kissing her. and Cate begins to panic, making "inarticulate crying sounds." Ian stops and calms her down, as she sucks her thumb.
When she is calm, Ian says, "That wasn't very fair...Leaving me hanging, making a prick of myself." He then says, "You don't have to fuck me 'cause I'm dying, but don't push your cunt in my face then take it away 'cause I stick my tongue out." He tells her that if he doesn't come his "cock aches," then puts her hand on his penis and masturbates himself with her hand.
After he comes, Cate apologizes, and Ian asks her if they can "make love" that night. Cate tells him that she's not his girlfriend anymore, because she is Shaun's girlfriend now. Ian asks her if she's slept with Shaun, but she tells him she hasn't, but insists that she looks back negatively at her relationship with Ian. "You were horrible to me...Stopped phoning me, never said why," she says.
As Ian reaches for his gun, there is a knock on the door. He says to Cate, "I'm not going to hurt you, just leave it. And keep quiet. It'll only be Sooty after something." He kisses her passionately, then goes to the door, finding some gin on the ground on a tray.
Cate tells Ian that he ought to have champagne since it's better for him, but Ian doesn't care about that. Ian asks Cate if she's afraid of death and Cate tells him, "Only for mum. She'd be unhappy if I died. And my brother." She asks Ian if Stella, his ex-wife, knows that he's dying, and he tells her she doesn't. Then she asks if his son, Matthew, knows, but Ian insists that Matthew hates him, ever since Stella "became a witch and fucked off with a dyke..."
Ian then hints that Cate ought to have sex with a woman, and she asks him if he's ever had sex with a man. "You dress like a lesbos. I don't dress like a cocksucker," he says. He then goes on a tirade, saying, "Hitler was wrong about the Jews who have they hurt the queers he should have gone for scum them and the wogs and fucking football fans send a bomber over Elland Road finish them off."
Cate says that she likes football and says that she went to a game on Saturday in which United beat Liverpool 2-0. Ian tells her that football is not about scoring goals, but about "tribalism."
"I go to Elland Road sometimes. Would you bomb me?" Cate says. They argue about whether they would be able to shoot each other. When she tells him he's soft, he smiles at her, "considering making a pass." He asks her about the job she's applied for, and she tells him it's a personal assistant job, but she doesn't know whom she'd be assisting.
"You shouldn't have that gun," Cate says to Ian, but he insists that he might need it. He kisses her and lights a cigarette, saying, "When I'm with you I can't think about anything else." She tells him about the "fits" she has, in which "Time slows down. A dream I get stuck in, can't nothing about it." He tries to get her to have sex with him, and she compares her fits to masturbating: "Just before I'm wondering what it'll be like, and just after I'm thinking about the next one, but just as it happens it's lovely, I don't think of nothing else."
They go back and forth; Ian wants to have sex, but Cate turns him down.
Analysis
As a practitioner of "in-yer-face theatre," Sarah Kane waits for a suitably shocking moment to reveal that Ian, this mysterious and brutal man sharing the hotel room with Cate, is a journalist. When he answers the phone, he dictates an article to the person on the other end. This is the longest bit of text we have heard in the play so far, and it comes as a bit of a shock so far into the sparsely worded exchange between Cate and Ian.
Not only is the density of Ian's dictated text to the man over the phone shocking, but also its subject matter. We have already seen that Ian himself has a violent streak, carrying a gun and manipulating Cate as he sees fit. This makes his coverage of the senseless murder of a young girl in New Zealand all the more chilling, as he briskly unloads the facts to the person on the phone. When he is finished dictating his account of this chilling story, Ian begins speaking in violent terms himself—"scouse tart, spread her legs"—and the location of the violence becomes blurry and unclear.
The title of the play surely refers to Ian's taste for drink. In the course of the first ten minutes of the play, he drinks a large glass of gin, a gin and tonic, a glass of champagne, and orders another bottle of gin up to the room. He lives intensely and excessively, and his gluttony and inebriation only make him more different from the meek and simple-minded Cate. As he gets more and more "blasted," he becomes more threatening.
One of the most disturbing and shocking elements of the play, and what made it so controversial at the time of its premiere, is its unflinching look at sexual violence and the fragile male psychology behind rape. In this section of the play, Ian tries to coerce Cate into having sex with him, never taking her "No" for an answer, and only stopping for fear of her having an episode and fainting again. Then, once she manages to calm down, he shames her for not being more sexually receptive, framing her desire not to have sex as an effort to humiliate him. Kane breaks down sexual violence explicitly as a kind of manipulation, a dynamic between Ian and Cate in which Ian tries to convince Cate, the vulnerable party, that it is actually him who is more vulnerable, because he is getting rejected.
No one is safe from Ian's bigotry and hatred. Throughout the play, he goes after people of color, homosexuals, and women with a hateful fury. At one point in their talk, Ian says to Cate, "Hitler was wrong about the Jews who have they hurt the queers he should have gone for scum them and the wogs and fucking football fans send a bomber over Elland Road finish them off." Ian exhibits an intense hatred and a desire to hurt anyone "other," and he doesn't mince words as he disparages minorities.
