1 May 2006 Written by Andrew Eglinton Print This Post  Email This Post

4:48 Psychosis is Sarah Kane’s final play in a body of work that changed the UK/international theatre landscape of the 90’s and continues to grow as new companies and directors explore her language and drama. Before I get to the review of Tangram Theatre’s production of 4:48 I want to expand a few thoughts on the late author.

Kane is often dubbed as being one of the leading playwrights in a theatre trend called ‘In yer face‘ theatre, whch Alex Sierz describes as “the kind of theatre which grabs the audience by the scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message.” If a trend is an attempt at contextualising/positioning a body of work in a given time and place, set by circles of critics, scholars and fans, then to pin Kane on the map surely limits the scope of her experiment. The substance of Kane’s work is as profound as you want it to be, it eludes frames of time and place in its poetic countenance, it deals with human conflicts that are at the base of evolution, and it takes shit to give shit back. The hopeless tragedy of its characters transcends morals; yes, it shakes you, and yes, if you’re looking for messages then you’ll probably end up finding them, but we spend so much time looking at the ground, seeing the world at eye-level that we forget to look up; and it’s up there through the ‘hatch of light’ that Kane’s attempt at capturing the poison and passion that screams in our veins, exists. Others have done it before and others will do it after Kane, and that’s the way the world crumbles and rebuilds everyday.

Tangram theatre company’s production of 4:48 Psychosis is running at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston until the 20th of May 2006. Tangram is a new company who’s five core members are recent graduates of L’Ecole Internationale Jacques Lecoq in Paris. They aim “to produce high-quality, accessible and innovative ensemble theatre to a diverse international audience.”

The space is clinical white: white brick walls, white chairs, white neon lights on the walls and overhead, and a cast of seven women dressed in white. At centre stage hangs a noose. The space is wide yet shallow in depth, cramped and intimate with no dark recesses to conceal the audience, everyone is exposed in a form reminiscent of Brecht: bringing light into the theatre - a technique of confrontation. The seven actresses are poised in formation from the beginning, their sharp gazes cut through the audience. These moments of ‘extreme’ focus are a device that is called on throughout the show as a contrast to the very dense and rhythmic text.

The seven women work as a chorus, at times one voice and one presence and other times framgented as individuals. Their speech oscillates betwen unison, canons, dialogue and monologue. Tangram plays with as many choral conifgurations as possible, and there are moments of pure flow, tapping into the rhythm of the play contrasted with some haunting pauses that force the audience to absorb Kane’s utter desperation. This is a play about living with acute depression, feeding off it and ending with it, and neither you nor I are far from its jaws. The performance is not without its problems, the constant whitewash washes out the darkness of a world that visits us at 4:48 when it’s pitch black outside, the actresses are clearly ‘trained’, can cry on cue, can sing their hearts out and push us to the brink of the ‘acceptable’ palette of emotions but in all brutal honesty we don’t visit the dark side in this show, and that’s the fix I’m looking for with Kane.