4.48 Psychosis Review

The competing voices within a psychotic mind were brought into stark relief by this year’s A level drama students.  Sarah Kane’s personal descent into oblivion was presaged in her own writing, and the staging of such an inner tragedy is not to be undertaken lightly.  Indeed, there was little of brightness in this harrowing production, although a dark humour leered and smirked around the odd corner.  Movement – extraordinary, complex, and balletic – underpinned the sense of shifting mental sands; and the actors’ overlapping voices the quasi-schizophrenic nature of the psychosis.  Devastatingly portrayed; difficult in the extreme; mesmerising – in the way of things ‘one would rather not have been party to’. 

My goodness, well done our cast of five – you are the survivors and can take your release from the straitjacket, and your other more troubling bonds, with… relief!  Phew.  Anyone know a good joke?