EIF Critic Alexander Gandar on TR Warszawa's production of the Sarah Kane play 4.48 Psychosis.

Martin Amis once wrote that suicide is the greatest form of murder. It isn't the killing of the self but rather the killing of all the world. This end of the emotional scale is where Grzegorz Jarzyna's production of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis succeeds: there is enough ire in Magdalena Cielecka's doomed protagonist to kill galaxies.

Where the play fails is finding the polemic - the comedy in the tragedy. Suicide is rarely amusing, naturally, but what else to do with lines like ‘I dreamt I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live - I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room half an hour.' than laugh? Kane was angry, no doubt, but also horrifically talented and blessed with a love of dramaturgy so deep she was still able to laugh at the futility in the world and give everything in between, no matter how "ill".

At least the one-note of this play is of complex tone, and Jarzyna often creates striking and stark images, leaning heavily on David Lynch for both aural and visual influences. 4.48 will never be an easy watch or an easy write, but it will always be a challenging work by one of the most important dramatists to grace the 20th century.