honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, April 26, 2006

'Psychosis' gets vivid staging

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Special to The Advertiser

Voices torment a suicidal girl (Marissa Robello) in "4.48 Psychosis."

Tony Pisculli

spacer spacer

'4.48 PSYCHOSIS'

8 p.m. Friday, April 28 through Sunday, April 30 at The ARTS at Marks Garage.

$15

550-8457

spacer spacer

If an 80-minute meditation on the subject of suicide in the run-on style of James Joyce is your idea of a provocative evening, you will be intrigued by "4.48 Psychosis," now playing at The Arts at Marks Garage. If not? You might still be gripped by its visual images.

The Lizard Loft production of British playwright Sarah Kane's last work is directed by Taurie Kinoshita, who seems to resonate with provocative and uncompromising theater pieces. And Kane's free-form, autobiographical prose offers an inviting canvas for vivid stage pictures.

The play's title is derived from the time of day when Kane — who battled mental illness before committing suicide in 1999 at the age of 28 — felt most awake and clear. Curiously, it is also the time when mental delusions are said to be their strongest.

There are moments of dark comedy in the script: "Went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live. I'd been sitting in the (expletive) waiting room half an hour." But Kinoshita's interpretation is unremittingly, dead-on serious.

There are no characters written into the script, so its staging is fully open to the director's interpretation. Kinoshita uses a chorus of voices surrounding a central character of the Girl.

"The most important aspect of staging was to show how the voices in her mind inflict the pain," Kinoshita said. "By creating these characters, the voices become as real to the audience as they are to the girl."

The Girl (Marissa Robello) is always in center focus and almost always closely circled by her negative voices (Kathy Hunter, in a pristine little black cocktail dress, and Reb Beau Allen in a shredded tuxedo) and a single positive voice (Ryan Sueoka, barefoot and in all white).

While the positive and negative voices literally arm-wrestle for prominence and bash each other with bone-crunching stage combat, the Girl spirals deeper toward her ultimate escape through suicide. Hopelessly looking on, the audience exists in a suspended state between madness and death.

Ultimately, the Girl silences the chorus and ritualistically represents her own suicide, kneeling over a bathtub and wiping her nearly nude body with red paint.

It is a vivid image and a fitting final punch to an arresting stage piece.

Correction: The drama "4.48 Psychosis" will be performed at 8 p.m. tomorrow through Sunday at The ARTS at Marks Garage. The times posted yesterday were incorrect. "4.48 Psychosis" is British playwright Sarah Kane's last work; it is directed in this production by Taurie Kinoshita. Information in an earlier versio of this review was incorrect.