4.48 Psychosis

Joyce McMillan, THE SCOTSMAN

If ever there was a dramatic text that looked more like a score for performance than a conventional play, it's Sarah Kane's extraordinary final work 4:48 Psychosis, written shortly before her death in 1999.

Sometimes arranged across the page in strange patterns, sometimes moving from monologue into dialogue and back again, the continuous text is not assigned to any fixed number of speakers. But it clearly records the last thoughts and conversations of a suicidal woman as she reflects on the failure of her relationships and argues with the doctors who cannot help her. In Britain, the play is usually performed as a fairly simple triple monologue.

In this dark, sensationally powerful version by TR Warszawa, though, director Grzegorz Jarzyna uses all the resources of his company to create both a powerful soundscape and physical setting for the drama - a hospital-like space, stunningly lit by Felice Ross in shifting crosses and tunnels of fading light - and to animate the various angels and demons that haunt the speaker. There's a doctor, a male lover, a female lover, and images of her younger and older self, all casting new light on Kane's text.

What's remarkable about Kane's writing is that even in this moment of infinite bleakness, her words can't help pulsating with an astonishing energy, beauty and wit. And in the lead role, Magdalena Cielecka gives an unforgettable performance, as clever, tormented, beautiful and passionate as Kane herself.