Posted by: Iain Fisher
« on: September 04, 2011, 06:13:02 PM »and another review: Anthony Byrnes KCRW, 9 Aug 2011. Thefull review is here:
www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ab/ab110809a_dark_night_of_the_?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kcrw%2Fab+(Opening+the+Curtain)
The article is quite thoughtful:
"...Like Georg BĂŒchner's grueling Woyzeck or Heiner MĂŒller's Hamletmachine, 4.48 Psychosis presents a puzzle that directors are seduced to solve. In the process, their productions tell you as much about the director as the play.
...What makes Sarah Kane's play so ripe for interpretation is that it lacks many of the formal characteristics of a play. There are no characters, no setting, and only one stage direction: silence presented in three flavors: (silence), (a long silence), and (a very long silence). The play reads like a poem and demands that a director create a script from its fragments.
"...City Garage is a company known for their physical work, so it's no surprise that director Michel injects the silence of the piece with absurdist, syncopated movement that feels like a choreography of nervous ticks set to an infectiously hip score. We see our heroine break into a jerky, joyous dance that reveals a glimpse of the happiness that might have once filled her life: a welcome moment of hope against a bleak descent into misery."
"Ultimately, the challenge of the play is bringing a suicidal despair to life for an audience, and here the production falls short. Remember the only stage direction: silence? Michel fills some of the play's crucial silences with the sounds of the patient's heart beating. It's clever but it undermines the raw strength of Sarah Kane's words. Words that the playwright wrote shortly before taking her own life."
"..Perhaps, the most difficult thing about the play is there is that there's no redemption, no ray of hope. You want to believe in the redemptive power of art...."
www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ab/ab110809a_dark_night_of_the_?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kcrw%2Fab+(Opening+the+Curtain)
The article is quite thoughtful:
"...Like Georg BĂŒchner's grueling Woyzeck or Heiner MĂŒller's Hamletmachine, 4.48 Psychosis presents a puzzle that directors are seduced to solve. In the process, their productions tell you as much about the director as the play.
...What makes Sarah Kane's play so ripe for interpretation is that it lacks many of the formal characteristics of a play. There are no characters, no setting, and only one stage direction: silence presented in three flavors: (silence), (a long silence), and (a very long silence). The play reads like a poem and demands that a director create a script from its fragments.
"...City Garage is a company known for their physical work, so it's no surprise that director Michel injects the silence of the piece with absurdist, syncopated movement that feels like a choreography of nervous ticks set to an infectiously hip score. We see our heroine break into a jerky, joyous dance that reveals a glimpse of the happiness that might have once filled her life: a welcome moment of hope against a bleak descent into misery."
"Ultimately, the challenge of the play is bringing a suicidal despair to life for an audience, and here the production falls short. Remember the only stage direction: silence? Michel fills some of the play's crucial silences with the sounds of the patient's heart beating. It's clever but it undermines the raw strength of Sarah Kane's words. Words that the playwright wrote shortly before taking her own life."
"..Perhaps, the most difficult thing about the play is there is that there's no redemption, no ray of hope. You want to believe in the redemptive power of art...."