Okay, so before I start, I will begin by applauding the sheer foolhardiness of the Oriel cuppers. The decision to put on such an intense and fragmentary play as Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis is undeniably a bold move, let alone over a period of a few weeks. It is true that Kane’s name has carries a certain notoriety, and she is perhaps best known for the In-Yer-Face shock tactics of plays such as Blasted! and Crave all of which are infamous for their demands upon the acting troop.
Kane’s play delves into the mental world of the clinically depressed, it is a harsh uncompromising insight into the mind of a suicidal woman. Kane herself suffered severely from depression and went on to commit suicide in 1999, meaning the play had to be performed posthumously. The play has no distinct characters, stage directions, or setting; rather, it is a collection of twenty-four scenes on the subject of clinical depression. Because of this, no two productions of the play are at all alike – there is so much scope for interpretation. In other words, it is easy to butcher.
First impressions of the Oriel play were striking, the theatre remained in complete darkness, cue the sound of a ticking clock, and someone, somewhere shouting seemingly random numbers into the audience. As the scenes of dialogue began, the actors used of torches to momentarily illuminate their faces in the darkness, using that moment to shout into the audience about how alone and sad they felt. Whilst I thought that the climatic movement of these torch lights across the 4 actors faces was nicely choreographed, it still reminded me of someone holding a torch to their face to tell a scary Halloween story. Overall, the staging was precise and relatively effective,
The four actors onstage, purposefully masked to prevent individualisation, struggled to fully express any sense of inner anguish. In a play with no clear characters, characterization is so important, and I was left feeling that the actors were not aware of who they were, and what was going on. Instead, there was a lot of shouting at the audience.
