Product Description

4.48 Psychosis was written throughout the autumn and winter of 1998-99 as Kane battled with one of her recurrent bouts of depression. On February 20, 1999, aged 28, the playwright committed suicide. On the page, the piece looks like a poem. No characters are named, and even their number is unspecified. It could be a journey through one person's mind, or an interview between a doctor and his patient.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25857 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 64 pages

Review
'Is it possible, asks the text, for a person to be born in the wrong body, at the wrong time? Yes, is the answer. But sometimes, from that agony, a great soul can wrestle something as beautiful and true as this remarkable play.' Scotsman (4 November 2008) '4.48 Psychosis still feels immediate, intimate and raw - if anything, the onward march of our confessional culture has made it feel even more contemporary.' Aleks Sierz, Tribune, 7.8.09 'Sarah Kane's last play, written before she killed herself 10 years ago, has been described as a theatrical suicide note. That sells it short. It is so much more: a manifesto for living by one about to die.' Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 25.7.09 'an extraordinary exploration of the human condition, and of psychological disintegration in particular. It exposes the terrifying clarity of the acute depressive's unblinking certainty that their existence is intolerable and can never be otherwise; the play's title refers to Kane's early morning moments of such cruel lucidity.' Sam Marlowe, The Times, 28.7.09 'Kane's fractured poetry, lacerating in its anguish and devil-driven dark humour' Sam Marlowe, The Times, 28.7.09

Customer Reviews

Incredible
This is an amazing play. On one hand - Sarah Kane's own suicide note - on another, something much more than that. I experienced a performance of this before I read it - for those of you familiar with Artaudian techniques - this was full on.
My friends were in the production - but I couldn't recognise them. When I looked into their eyes they were blank.
This play touches something really deep in you - it's hard to describe unless you've experienced it.
If you get the chance to see this as a proper Artaudian performance (i.e. no barrier between audience and actor - other than health and safety regulations!) then I would definately recommend it - it's amazing.

a saner life tomorrow
I read the text three times this year and saw a german performance on stage. I think the text is difficult to perform because there is no „real" dialogue in the text. The play is like a poem to me. The more you read the text, the more you feel the rhythm of the words.
The play consist of a inner monologue about the feelings and experiences of Sarah Kane. This is intersected by a dialogue between her and a doctor. The central aspect of the play is the unanswered love to a person she will never meet. It causes the pain she describes in her monologue. Her medical treatment in hospital influences the drama. She wants to detach the body from the soul. In this moment she can only be by herself, especially when she cuts her arms. It gives her the energy to go on because she wants to live. In the end she haven't got the strength to carry on because her love is unrequited. The psychosis on 4.48 in the morning is the result of the lack of happiness in her life. The problems she shows us in the text are common in everyone lives but it is not so extreme in ours as in hers.
After forty pages you feel a void and a desired to cease the tension. But you can't help it.

Adieu Sarah
Sarah Kane's final play, completed weeks before her tragic death last year, explores clinical depression and suicide. It would be all too easy to dismiss the play as Sarah's own suicide note, but that would be to do it an injustice. As with all her other plays, here Sarah writes from the heart on issues that affect her enormously. The heroine's examination of her emotions - being trapped in a depression, pain of lost love and of longing for an unattainable perfect partner, fixation with the notion of killing herself at 4.48 - is both harrowing and genuinely moving. Sarah has also lost none of her famous black humour - lines like "Nothing will interfere with your work more than suicide" and the classic "The doctor gave me eight minutes to live. I'd been in the f***ing waiting room half an hour" light up this play like fireworks on a pitch black night. It is also very gratifying to see her hurl words of her detractors back in their faces! The final scene, as the heroine says "Watch me vanish" and lies down to die, reduced me and at least one more audience member to tears - while the printed page cannot quite convey the effect of the stage production, nonetheless I cannot recommend this play enough. Make the most of this slice of a brilliantly original and unique talent - alas, there will be no more, and there will never be another like her. Adieu, Sarah.