4.48 Psychosis Opera Revival Opens at Linbury Theatre — SkimNews
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- The Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music and Drama commissioned Philip Venables to adapt Sarah Kane's posthumously performed final play "4.48 Psychosis" as an opera, which debuted in 2016 and is set almost entirely to Kane's original text across 24 disjointed sections.
- Venables' score blends minimalist licks, prickly synth-pop and nods to the baroque, overlapping vocal lines through a six-part polyphonic chorus and a single spoken voice over a loudspeaker evoking Kane's authorial presence.
- Ted Huffman's 10-year-old production is revived at the Linbury Theatre with a subtly revised ending, staged within Hannah Clark's institutional white box set and lit starkly by DM Wood.
- London-based collective Chroma forms the 14-piece chamber orchestra perched above the action, featuring three saxophones, piano synthesiser and accordion, with orchestrations the source describes as hissing with fierce violence.
- Percussionists Catherine Ring and Delia Stevens attack bass drums, carpenter's saw and shop-counter bell with dramatic intent, their duelling instruments punctuating patient-doctor exchanges for brief moments of levity.
- Conductor Naomi Woo leads six identically costumed female singers — Jacquelyn Stucker, Hannah Edmunds, Sophia Burgos, Veena Akama-Makia, Lauren Young and Marta Fontanals-Simmons — whose matching appearance suggests fragments of one fractured personality, with Stucker singled out as the deeply troubled protagonist.
Why it matters: The 10-year revival of Venables' opera offers a rare chance to experience a major operatic realization of Kane's most personal and harrowing work — confronting clinical depression and suicide through a six-singer ensemble and patient-psychologist exchanges. A carpenter's saw in the percussion section hints at how far the production goes to translate the play's violence into sound.
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