Review: 4:48 PSYCHOSIS at the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, RI

Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella directs Resident Actor Casey Seymour Kim in 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane.  The British playwright took her own life only months after she completed this, her fifth and final, play.

Ms. Kane’s towering intellect and tenuous hold on life are in evidence as Casey Seymour  Kim becomes her representative on earth.  With chopped hair, bandaged arms and dark circles under her eyes, the actress is barely recognizable as the disheveled, sleep-deprived woman who wakes up, once again, in an institution.  

The title of the play references the time of day that the character says she has clarity about the world.  The clarity, she says, lasts for one hour and twelve minutes long.  The play is exactly one hour and twelve minutes long.  Do not expect clarity.

Tom Gleadow plays a doctor in the institution to whom the character becomes, not unexpectedly, but unrealistically, attached.  As the doctor, Gleadow is appropriately reserved and detached.  The doctor makes only one, innocent, slip into familiarity.

Early in the play, the character describes how each compliment she receives takes a piece of her soul.  With only a thin, silvery string connecting her to reality, she uses enormous energy to argue with the doctor the difference between a simile and a metaphor.

The playwright, in a play that we assume to be autobiographical, makes no attempt to make the character likable.

Are the rantings of a woman who is dealing with serious mental health issues, including an obsession with her own death by suicide, good theater?  The playwright’s impending suicide is as compelling (more compelling?) than the play.  I have doubts that this play be given any serious consideration if it was written as fiction.  

Casey Seymour Kim grapples with this role, this character, and under Estrella’s direction, gives a bravura performance.

4:48 Psychosis plays at the Gamm Theatre through February 7, 2010. Tickets range from $24-$40 with discounts for subscribers, groups of 10 or more, seniors and students and are available by phone at 401-723-4266 or online at gammtheatre.org.

Photo:  Casey Seymour Kim and Tom Gleadow in 4:48 Psychosis

Photo Credit:  Peter Goldberg, courtesy of Gamm Theatre

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