Don Shirley's review of the Santa Monica 4.48 Psychosis. The review is dated 22 Aug 2011 and the full text is here
www.lastagetimes.com/2011/08/end-days-of-our-lives-and-psychosis-with-a-beat/It isn't particularly insightful.
"...Sarah Kaneâs 4.48 Psychosis... plays like Kaneâs invitation to join her down in the dumps â the very deep dumps. As you may have heard, it was written prior to the playwrightâs own suicide, and itâs essentially a roughshod chronicle of the descent of a young woman to the moment when she finally does the deed.
As chronicles go, itâs rather incomplete. We hear virtually nothing about her world prior to the onset of mental illness, what the first symptoms were, who else was in her life, how she tried to manage her affairs outside the doctorsâ offices and drugstores, or anything else that might distract us from the sheer agony of her existence and her sometimes barely-accessible ways of expressing it."
"... Large parts of it are fairly inscrutable. If Kane intended to give us a glimpse of what she was thinking, at times itâs none too clear."
"Director FrĂ©dĂ©rique Michel , at City Garage, divided the script into six characters identified as âSheâ (Cynthia Mance), Brains #1-#3, âPsychologistâ and âNurse Headâ â you might say theyâre six characters in search of an author (or an editor). None of them exists independently outside âthe deranged brainâ (the description of the setting) of the suicidal âShe.â
Perhaps in an attempt to make the production livelier, Michel also inserts a lot of rhythmic movement... While Iâm grateful for any attempts to make the action move a little more briskly, I donât see how these particular movements make much sense, thematically...."