4.48 Psychosis

4.48 Psychosis was Sarah Kane’s final play, before she took her own
life, aged 29. It was first staged posthumously by the Royal Court last
year at the Theatre Upstairs. Now revived in James Macdonald‘s masterly
production, it has been moved downstairs, but to a completely reconfigured
corner of the theatre that enhances the sense of dislocation that the play
is about.

Entering through the stalls, we are in fact led onto the stage itself, upon
which a seating bank has been installed facing out towards the auditorium,
with the audience partly reflected in a huge, angled mirror positioned over
the stage. The mirror also captures the actors, of course, and Macdonald’s
production, so superbly designed by Jeremy Herbert, is one of the most
desolately beautiful I have ever witnessed.

In fact, this work – which has no plot and which, in script form, doesn’t even ascribe its speeches to particular actors – is probably the
closest I’ve seen a play merge into being an art installation, but one
with a raw howl of pain at its centre that makes it art as well as artful.

Played in tandem with Kane’s penultimate play, Crave, it reverberates
with an overpowering sense of loss, in which a desire for love is juxtaposed
with an even greater wish for death. But it’s amazing to think of someone, so
clearly in despair herself, writing with such clarity and vision about her
own unhappiness. This is work that is terrifyingly torn straight from the
heart, and ultimately overwhelming.

It is also played to polished perfection by a cast that comprises Daniel
Evans (in a striking change of gear from his last London appearance, as
Charley Kringas in the Donmar production of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll
Along), Madeleine Potter (likewise a big departure from starring
opposite Macaulay Culkin in Madame Melville), and Jo McInnes.

Seeing Crave and 4.48 Psychosis together is like taking a trip on the London Eye, but with far more devastating consequences. The experience gives you a totally different perspective on familiar landmarks of the human condition; and you return to earth, or at least Sloane Square, with a totally changed view.

– Mark Shenton