4:48 Psychosis lays bare the experience of Acute Depression
The Royal Shakespeare Company presents a stunning new evocation of Sara Kane’s controversial play.
What’s it like to experience severe depression? Unless you have done so you’ll never know. The outward symptoms may be visible, and the consequences evident, even potentially fatal. But what it actually feels like, that’s something we might know of, but not know.
Sara Kane knew. And she wrote about it. In 4:48 Psychosis she took us probably as far as a play can take us into that awful world. That it’s not all bleak, that there are moments of acute observation and dark, dark humour, help a little to reinforce sympathy for what is fundamentally a condition of alienation. The dreadful loneliness of the person with depression, their acute awareness of their thoughts and feelings and their inability to express them in ways that others understand. Doctors have checklists of symptoms to measure the acuteness of the illness at any given time; friends, family and lovers watch on as their friend / relative / lover seems to abuse themselves and abuses them in turn. All the normal rules of civilised behaviour break down. Betrayal is the sine qua non of the depressed person’s experience, betrayed and betraying. Nothing is off limits.
4:48 Psychosis was first performed twenty five years ago. Now the original cast and creatives have recreated the play. It is a powerful experience that many will remember, though they might also prefer to forget. If the latter it won't be for the power of the performance.
Three actors, Madeleine Potter, Jo McInnes, and Daniel Evans, are on stage throughout the 70 minutes of the play, but they perform no characters as such. Sara Kane wrote the script as a stream of consciousness. Any of the lines could have been spoken by any of the actors. For all I know they are interchanged on the night. But I doubt it. The three work as one, as they must.
Visually, the play is remarkable, the technology employed boldly and with great sensitivity. The flat white stage is backed by a screen hanging at an angle behind it onto which the live action is projected from one or more cameras directly above. So we get two lines of sight simultaneously. At one level we engage with the characters more or less as equals, but on another we look down on them and try to take an ‘objective’ view of their experience. When interacting with someone with an unfathomable experience we naturally tend to do both, often preferring the latter, easier, point of view. The stage design reflects this duality beautifully.
The action of the play concerns the three-in-one character’s battle with herself and the medical establishment that tries to control her, albeit with the aim of easing her suffering. But there is a profound existential aspect to acute depression, that allows the individual to glimpse something of the nature of existence, of being human. The drugs might alleviate some of the worst symptoms, but they might also take away that strange vitality.
4:48 Psychosis doesn’t ‘make sense’. It’s not meant to, though it is as finely woven as a spider’s web. The short run at The Other Place, Stratford upon Avon is largely sold out. What the audience expects to get from watching it is an open question. Its notoriety goes before it. There is spectacle aplenty. There is emotion in spades. And a profound understanding of something that is more than just an illness. But are we merely voyeurs when we look at someone like Sara Kane, who killed herself shortly before the play’s first production? The play leaves the question hanging.
4:48 Psychosis is at The Other Place, Stratford upon Avon ‘til 27 July 2025.