A cry in the dark: SUDS’ 4.48 Psychosis

First produced in 2000, a year and a half after playwright Sarah Kane’s death, 4.48 Psychosis is a mesmerising and harrowing portrait of a mind at war with itself, whilst encompassing ideas about love, dependency, isolation, depression, and mental stability. In Kane’s own words, it is about “a psychotic breakdown and what happens to a person’s mind when the barriers which distinguish between reality… and imagination completely disappear.” Produced here by SUDS in their tiny Cellar Theatre, Kane’s play is an experiment in form, breaking down existing boundaries whilst making new ones which only stop where words do.

Revolutions per minute: Stories Like These & Griffin Independent’s Music

Music, produced by Stories Like These and playing at Griffin Theatre, is a “sharp critique of the way mental illness is perceived today,” and digs deeper to fathom the “consequences of raiding people’s personal lives in the name of art.” Written by Jane Bodie, it is the story of two actors (Sarah and Gavin) who befriend a seemingly innocuous young man (Adam) in the name of research for an upcoming play, unaware of the minefield and eggshells they are walking on with every step. Like Stories Like These’s last production seen at Griffin – 2013’s Rust and Bone, also directed by Corey McMahon – there is a robust sense of craft to both the writing and the production, and it is an intense and riveting uninterrupted one-hundred mintues.