4.48 Psychosis
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:28th Jan '16
Currently unavailable, currently targeted to be due back around 23rd March 2026, but could change
This work is the last play by Sarah Kane, the controversial contemporary British playwright, who died aged 28 in February 1999. A single voice, dragged through therapy and endless medication, reveals the true experience of clinical depression.
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.
'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 *
What we get is not just a painfully funny play about one person's struggle with mental illness, but also one that scratches all the scabs of inadequacy, failure and despair that we all bear. * Guardian *
ISBN: 9781474261067
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 209g
48 pages