4.48 Psychosis (Methuen Modern Plays)

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Replete with shocking confessions, piercing monologues and raw visuals, there aren’t any positive takeaways from the one-hour-12-minute performance to be honest. She understands theatre at such a deep level; in some ways I don’t think we’ve caught up with her yet. Charles Spencer of the Telegraph said "it is impossible not to view it as a deeply personal howl of pain. played in front of an invited audience – family and friends, colleagues, and fellow playwrights, among them Harold Pinter and Joe Penhall. In the midst of that critical firestorm, several noted British playwrights quickly came to Kane’s defense, including Caryl Churchill ( Cloud Nine), Harold Pinter ( Betrayal) and Edward Bond ( Saved).

End of the day, theatre is a form of art and its aesthetics are crucial to keeping the audience’s attention. She points to Kane’s formal experimentalism, the startling urgency and precision of her language, the way the play itself invites the audience to experience a form of psychosis, in which reality dissolves even as it appears. Macdonald eventually settled on a cast of three: Daniel Evans, who had worked with Kane on Cleansed, and fellow actors Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter.Sarah Kane’s life and career came to an abrupt end, when the playwright hanged herself at a London hospital in February 1999. The creative team decided to invite groups of actors to read through the text, to plot out how many voices were needed, who might speak where. Psychosis is a ‘choreopoem’ that follows the upheavals of a girl’s psyche, who really wanted to live but was never in love with life.

Philip Venables’ award-winning operatic adaptation of Kane’s play is the first ever permitted adaptation of any of her work. It was her last work, first staged at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs on 23 June 2000, directed by James Macdonald, nearly one and a half years after Kane's death on 20 February 1999. Certain images are repeated within the script, particularly that of "hatch opens, stark light"; a repeated motif in the play is " serial sevens" which involves counting down from one hundred by sevens, a bedside test often used by psychiatrists to test for loss of concentration or memory. Contemplation and discussion of suicide are prominent and while there is no strict narrative or timeline, certain issues and events are clearly dealt with: deciding whether to take medication to treat depression, the desires of the depressed mind, the effects and effectiveness of medication, self-harm, suicide and the possible causes of depression. The interpretations and responses that we have received so far have not been very pleasant, of course, with many even seeing it as an example of ‘theatre of cruelty’.It felt like we had a responsibility to give breath and life to this amazing thing that Sarah had created. is infinitely more than a suicide note: “People take her story on and then they infuse her work with that: I find that really frustrating.

The production starred Polish film actress Magdalena Cielecka and featured a number of other performers from TR Warszawa in supporting roles.Psychosis heralds a break with all theatrical conventions–the play reads more like a poem, without character distinctions or stage directions –and even presents much of Kane’s personal medical history–her struggle with antidepressants, suicidal tendencies and her philosophical wrestling with the idea of mortality. They include Phaedra’s Love, based on Seneca’s classic story of a scheming mother and son, and a later play, Cleansed, which centered on the survival of love amongst a group of inmates in a futuristic concentration camp. If Kane is not exactly part of the establishment – the thought would probably have amused and horrified her – she is now a canonical figure, celebrated in many countries worldwide. To me the heart of it is a love story – what does it mean to love, can we love, all those questions. Psychosis is composed of twenty-four sections which have no specified setting, characters or stage directions.

When he got the news that his sister had taken an overdose, Simon rushed to visit her in hospital, then went to her flat in Brixton to collect some belongings.The controversy began over Blasted, Kane’s first play presented at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1995. In February 1999, she killed herself at King’s College hospital, south London, three days after a previous suicide attempt. deserves to be seen as the astonishing piece of theatre it is – as playful as it is confessional, simultaneously precise and improvisatory, roaring with life and wit and energy as it gazes unblinkingly at depression and death. Psychosis premiered one month after her suicide, the connection between the playwright and her work was apparent to all. Psychosis, which was performed for the first time at the Royal Court in 2000, that causes discomfort to the hilt.