Sarah Kane article # 2

On the heels of Sarah Hemmings' article, there's a good piece by Andrew Dickson in The Guardian today looking back at the premiere of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis (on the eve of an operatic version of the play).

I'm not specifically mentioned in the piece which I am absolutely fine about. I had a phone conversation with Andy to help with the research for it and he begins the piece talking about the day I got Sarah over to Royal Holloway - about which there is much else on this website.

What I like in this piece is the sense that the dust is settling a bit on Sarah's reputation. We're not so bowled over by the intensity and the violence and the shadow of her suicide has shortened. We can even note that, while this does not exhaust the play by any means, 4.48 Psychosis is in part a suicide note of an unusually rich and complicated kind. I also love the comment by Sarah's brother, Simon, that 'Mental illness is so often sentimentalised, or portrayed as madness – I hate that word. Sarah wanted to convey that while it may be pathological, it isn’t necessarily illogical'  which seems to me exactly right about the play..