4.48 Psychosis
Warning Trigger
4.48 Psychosis
by Sarah Kane
Royal Shakespeare Company at The Jerwood Upstairs, the Royal Court Theatre, Chelsea until 5thJuly, then at the Other Place Stratford until 27thJuly
Review by Patrick Shorrock
Twenty-five years ago, Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis received its first performances after her suicide the previous year. A quarter of a century later, that production has been revived – with the same cast and director – at the Royal Court Theatre in its intimate Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. 25 years is a long time in theatre. Kane’s work has inevitably become less closely linked to her life and tragic suicide and now seems to be standing on its own feet, having morphed from iconoclastic to classic.
And, while it may have the same performers – Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes, and Madeleine Potter – they are now 25 years older, and the cultural context is different. There is more awareness of mental health issues, and the pain that comes with them. Perhaps this makes this play seem less daring and unusual than it was when it was new.
And, unlike 25 years ago, there are now trigger warnings, which go into considerable detail. The Royal Court’s website even suggests that they might constitute spoilers and issues a warning about the trigger warning. That said, anyone going to a Sarah Kane play expecting a Mamma Mia style feel-good romp surely deserves all they get. Trigger warnings are well-intentioned, but their timing is all wrong: you need to know before you buy your tickets, not when you arrive at the theatre.
But what remains fresh is the way that this play is not tethered to a realist aesthetic. The script does not specify a number of performers or give any stage directions. Here it is divided between three actors. This avoids the static and exhausting feeling induced by a monologue from a single performer, and is helpful when some of the script represents the words of other people such as the protagonist’s psychiatrist. But having three performers leaves one with (never to be resolved) questions about which one of them is playing the protagonist, although this detachment from individual identity is perhaps a further symptom of depression.
Having seen the piece with a single performer, I found it far more convincing, varied, and coherent with three. Sometimes they seemed to converse; sometimes they all spoke together; but more often one spoke alone while the others were slumped in exhausted anguish. The piece comes across more as chanted poetry than a play and even feels like a Greek Chorus that goes on for seventy minutes. It does not seem to progress neatly to a crisis and resolution, but seems to lurch from one mood and subject to another, sometimes obsessively returning to the same words and thoughts, as the protagonist remains imprisoned in their distress.
Some of the words are nonsensical babble. (“flash flicker slash burn wring press dab slash flash flicker punch burn” etc). Some express anger against an uncomprehending therapist mired in cliché, even managing occasionally to be wryly funny about how experience is medicalised in the manner patented by Sylvia Plath in The BellJar. Some of it is like howls of pain at the rejection of a loved one who is loved obsessionally. (“Cut out my tongue, tear out my hear, cut off my limbs, but leave me love.”). Some of it is poetic often derived from old testament language (“Come now let us reason together. Sanity is found in the mountain of the Lord’s house on the horizon of the soul that eternally recedes. Embrace beautiful lies – the chronic insanity of the sane”). Some of it downright embarrassing (“I beg you to save me from this madness that eats me a sub-intentional death”). Very little of the mechanics of ordinary life impinge — but this may be because they are beyond the characters’ capabilities.
And the strange thing about this play is that there are none of the scenes of violence or bloodletting for which Kane’s work is infamous. It is more a stark depiction of the experience of clinical depression: where you do not want to kill yourself, but the compulsion to do so is almost irresistible.
Patrick Shorrock, June 2025
Photography by Marc Brenner
Mark Aspen 