Closed ward

Roman Pawłowski, GAZETA WYBORCZA

A provocative play about a suicide is a test to contemporary theatre. Can we face a tragedy of the humankind?

The Polish première of Sarah Kane's last play was preceded with a great debate concerning ethical and esthetical limits in drama. The discussion was brought about by the staging of another play by the author who committed suicide 3 years ago, at the age of 28. The performance of „Cleansed" in Teatr Współczesny in Wrocław made the critics wonder if sex and violence on the stage are acceptable.
The author was judged and doomed on the basis of her tragic biography and one or two of her plays. The mechanism of perception was the same as in Great Britain: discarded by the critics after „Blasted" - her first, brutal play, Kane gained more and more admiration among the audience with her next works. Her last play, staged no earlier than after her death, was a triumph.
The cooperation of Teatr Polski from Poznań and Teatr Rozmaitości from Warsaw shows how far the debate wandered away from the essence of her works. „4.48 Psychosis" is not a brutal play as it does not contain scenes of rape or violence, nobody cuts anybody's limbs off, or cuts their throats. It is a quiet, poetic monologue of a woman forced by her life situation to commit suicide. The text is composed of her conversations with relatives and doctors, fragments of books about the suicidal syndrome, Bible paraphrases, doctors' diagnoses. Medical terms appear next to love declarations, psychologist's advice is contrasted with the visions of God. It is not a recording of dying, but of a heroic struggle for life witnessed by an indifferent or not understanding world. The heroine of „Psychosis" fails, nevertheless she does not lose the highest value - will of survival.

Look at me

Grzegorz Jarzyna directed this unattractive, pageantry-lacking play in an extremely severe way. The set is monochromatic, grey and white, apart from doctors' green coats. The set by Małgorzata Szczęśniak implies a hospital interior, action takes place mostly in the empty space of proscenium. There is no outstanding musical setting, which Jarzyna's performances are famous for. There is only a monotonous, electronic noise and Marylin Monroe's song „When I Fall in Love", which constitutes an ironic counterpoint to this gloomy story.
Jarzyna wrote out the text for six, while it was originally assigned for three characters. Apart from the main character played by Magdalena Cielecka, there is her lover (Katarzyna Herman), her friend (Rafał Maćkowiak), and three doctors (Mariusz Benoit, Janusz Stolarski, Edward Warzecha). There are also two mute roles of a small girl and an old woman, who appear in the character's dreams as the projections of her past and impossible future. The broadening of the character's list paradoxically intensifies solitude: the girl is surrounded by a crowd of people, with whom she cannot communicate. She hopes for love and support while the increasing doses of medicine is the only thing she can get.
The following scenes resemble hospital visits, during which everybody pretends everything is all right, restraining their own fears. The rhythm is given by the voice counting down from one hundred. Some of the numbers appear on the wall, as if on a screen of some medical device. In one of the scenes, the main character is showered by a rain of numbers, which fall on the stage like heavy drops.

However, it is not the director's concept but the acting mastery of Magdalena Cielecka that is the essence of the performance. At first, the actress shows too much compassion towards her character, she speaks about suicide as if she was trying to awake someone's pity. Later on, her voice becomes more severe, her gestures more violent and the monologue gains an accusing tone. And the fact that the accusation of an indifferent, loathsome world is suspended in a vacuum is of no importance, because we know nothing about the events that have lead this woman to the edge of the precipice. The quintessence of Kane's drama is the impertinence of disillusion, bringing to light hypocritical feelings, spurious wisdom and false ideologies.
The boldness is in Cielecka's performance. The actress does not attempt to excuse her character, to seek psychological reasons for her state. She herself is an accusation and a prove that the world has left its frames.
The actress actually knocks herself onto the wall in one of the closing scenes. Standing half naked, covered with blood in front of the audience, she cries „Validate me/ Witness me/ See me/ Love me". It is the end the theatre based on aesthetic and intellectual amusement. Everyone, whether they like it or not, must face pain and despair, which are usually avoided in everyday life, and of which we try to forget. Such scenes take place behind closed doors of apartments and hospital wards. The actors of Teatr Rozmaitości impudently open these doors to say „Validate me/ Witness me/ See me/ Love me".

1:1

This shocking scene changes theatre's sense. It is no longer an interpretative interplay with literature, acting virtuosity, glittering lights and trespassing moral standards. It deals with tragedies of the humankind, shown with no useless ornaments, in 1:1 scale.
„4.48 Psychosis" is a test to contemporary theatre. Can we see a person, not an actor on the stage? Can we notice a genuine pain behind lines of text, which make up literature? Is theatre simply an instrument of peeping at others, or does it give us more than the convenience and safety of a peeping Tom? The performance directed by Jarzyna leaves these questions open to us. These are probably the most important ones.