The initial performance was highly controversial and the play was fiercely attacked by most newspaper critics, many of whom regarded it as an attempt to shock the audience.[14] However, critics have subsequently reassessed it; for example The Guardian's Michael Billington, who savaged the play in his first review, later recanted in the wake of Kane's suicide: "I got it wrong, as I keep saying. She was a major talent. Apparently, Harold Pinter said at her memorial service that she was a poet, and I think that's dead right."[15] After seeing a revival of the play, an Evening Standard reviewer Annie Ferguson wrote "How shrill and silly the 1995 hullabaloo and hysteria seemed last night when Blasted returned to the Royal Court. It is, and always was, a play with a fine, moral purpose."[3] It was listed in The Independent as one of the 40 best plays ever.[16]
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