Jo McInnes Archives - The Real Chrisparkle

Sarah Kane’s final play is a challenge to any director or cast. How do you treat this poetic but agonising piece of writing, which leaves few clues as to how it should be staged, with the dignity and respect that it deserves, without simply creating a gloomfest? It cries out for its voice to be heard and demands that you at least try to understand the mental torture of its writer. But, when all’s said and done, it’s not a lecture or TED talk, it’s a play and decisions have to be made as to how to present it.

In what must be an almost unique venture, the entire original creative team have reunited 25 years later in this co-production with the Royal Court Theatre, at whose Jerwood Theatre Upstairs the play was first produced. Not only the same cast and the same director, James Macdonald; it’s the same team of designer, lighting and sound. So, even without seeing the original, I feared this might be an exercise in preserving something in aspic rather than an attempt to find new things in the text that were not obvious 25 years ago.

It is, however, a brand new production, and James Macdonald and designer Jeremy Herbert have come up with a masterstroke; a huge mirror, the same dimensions as the stage, slanting at a daunting angle, reflecting the on-stage activity as a backdrop, and even capturing the first few rows of the audience to add to its theatricality. Nigel Edwards’ inspired lighting design highlights the two chairs and table in the mirror to create some truly impressive effects, and Ben Walden’s projection adds to the magic by turning the table surface into a window on the world, or blasting the entire stage with white noise, offering an insight into the clarity of vision and thought (or lack thereof) experienced by our protagonist.

Each of the three actors takes on many guises over the 70 minutes; not only someone suffering from severe depression, but doctors, friends, colleagues and all the other voices who do their best to offer support or lend reason to the central character. And it’s in those side characterisations that Kane gives the cast an occasional opportunity to lighten the weight of the text. There’s a truly laugh out loud moment when Daniel Evans, portraying a doctor who’s clearly had a long hard day, bursts out with I fucking hate this job and I need my friends to be sane – only to realise that it was a Did I say that out loud moment and then have to apologise profusely.

Macdonald places his actors in all sorts of unusual positions for several of their speeches – resting flat on the ground in a crucifixion or savasana pose, or on top of the table with their head tilted over the edge, talking directly to the mirror, or furiously writhing on the table, all of which create fascinating images in the mirror, helping us to see them, literally, from a different perspective. It sounds gimmicky, but it works. The actors write backwards on the table top – medical prescriptions, or simply their thoughts – so that we can see the writing in the mirror; a clever touch.

The ensemble of Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter dovetail their speeches and actions immaculately, with superb vocal clarity throughout. One of the most powerful moments comes when Jo McInnes struggles violently on top of the table, so that in the mirror she appears trapped within a tiny box, a true metaphor for the state of her mind. The whole play is performed with devastating sincerity but emotionally controlled, peppered with daringly long pauses where the characters find neither the words, the impetus, nor the need, to speak.

Sarah Kane submitted her text to the Royal Court in 1999 and within a few days had taken her own life. It’s impossible to separate the personal tragedy from the theatrical product, but it’s clear that this is a lucid, deliberate, structured piece of work. The title, it is said, comes from the fact that she would wake at 4.48 due to her mental anguish. As her text states: At 4.48 when sanity visits for one hour and twelve minutes I am in my right mind. When it has passed I shall be gone again. One hour and twelve minutes is almost exactly how long it takes to perform the play; is this as an affirmation that the piece is written in those brief times of sanity surrounded by mental torture?

A very intense piece of writing given a great performance with an inspired setting. This isn’t the kind of play one enjoys; rather it’s an opportunity to bear witness to a state of mind that one hopes one never encounters personally but which is very real and prevalent all around us. And it is the sad swansong of a huge talent taken too young.