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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

4.48 Psychosis review – bared anguish and delicate detail in Sarah Kane’s final play

Daniel Evans, Madeleine Potter and Jo McInnes in 4.48 Psychosis at the Royal Court theatre.
A museum piece … Daniel Evans, Madeleine Potter and Jo McInnes in 4.48 Psychosis at the Royal Court theatre. Photograph: Marc Brenner

What must it have felt like to watch Sarah Kane’s final play, whose depressed protagonist plots imminent suicide, knowing that the playwright killed herself the previous year?

First staged in 2000, under the shadow of Kane’s death in 1999, it is back now with the original creative team, including director James Macdonald and its fine three-strong cast of Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter. They play a divided self, it seems, reflecting on illness, shame, self-loathing, love, betrayal, medication culture and – importantly – the prospect of ending it all at exactly 4.48am.

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