Psychosis at Royal Court. Photo Marc BrennerTwenty-Five years on and Sarah Kane’s last play is once again performed at the Royal Court by Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter. The same cast as before, and if the literature is to be believed, the same creative team. The question is, why?
First off, for those looking for an easy piece of light entertainment, you need read no further, this is most definitely not for you. Sarah Kane had throughout her short life, struggled with depression and frequently talked of suicide. Some have suggested in the years since her death, that drama was her umbilical lifeline but that she chose to hang herself with it. Leaving aside the seeming glibness inherent in this remark, the comment was said by an individual who knew her and knew of her struggles with theatre as an industry. The grim and depressing details do not need to be recounted here, but suffice to say, there are sections in the play which detail medical assessment, the prescribing of drugs, psychological evaluation and the inability of others to comprehend how depression can occupy and consume the most creative of minds.
The play itself contains the sort of self-conscious material which would have had the turn of the century Hampstead cheese and wine intelligentsia in raptures. One can almost hear them bandying pretentious phrases like literal vitality and cerebral dynamism before having their Pinot topped-up and delving into a Cornish Yarg. But, irrespective of the pseuds, for certain Kane’s stylised writing with its long pauses and jointly spoken passages, contains vividly poetic sections and emotionally jarring spoken imagery. There is a real sense that the brain’s battle with sanity is lost before it’s begun and so tragically, it was for the author. Harold Pinter once pointed to a line in Kane’s play “Crave” in which she stated: Death is my lover, and he wants to move in.” Perhaps more than any other, it is this conclusion about man’s inhumanity which convinced the playwright that life was not worth living. She certainly believed that there was no future for theatre. Her play therefore frequently references death, suicide, anger and helplessness as it delves into the potential misery which awaits us all.
Psychology students and phantom attendees at funerals will love it, otherwise, save the ticket price and instead go and educate yourself about Sarah and her struggles, which may prove a far more worthwhile exercise.
Essentially a theatrical suicide note, 4.48 PSYCHOSIS runs upstairs at the Royal Court until 5 July and then at the RSC’s Other Place, Stratford upon Avon until 4.48am on Sunday 27 July.
