Friday night in downtown Warsaw, and outside an old cabaret theatre just off the city centre’s main drag, a couple of hundred young people are queuing round the block. The majority of them are in their teens or early twenties, and are chattering away in packs with such zeal that you get the impression they’re about to pay homage to their favourite pop idol. In a way, such a notion isn’t that far from the truth. Because once the doors open on what is now the rough and ready home of TR Warszawa and the young audience take their seats, when the speak-easy vibe subsides, the performance they barely take breath for over the next hour has a cache of cool that most theatre companies would die for.
The fact that Sarah Kane, whose final play, 4.48 Psychosis, is the one onstage, has become so iconic since her death in 1999, probably helps. The presence of a major film star in the lead role too is a bonus for what looks like being a major attraction in this year’s Edinburgh International Festival.
Magdalena Cielecka is blonde, beautiful, and above all else, a brilliant actress. In Poland, she’s a star from a recurring role in TV soap opera, Magda M. Onstage, Cielecka appeared in Tony Kushner’s Angels In America and a stream of boundary-pushing contemporary classics. More recently, she was one of the leads in Katyn, a bleak look at the Stalinist murder of Polish soldiers during World War Two. Directed by Poland’s greatest director, Andrzej Wajda, Katyn was nominated for an Oscar, raising Cielecka’s profile even more.
4.48 Psychosis director Grzegorz Jarzyna is one of a new breed of theatre makers in Poland who concern themselves with the contemporary. As artistic director of TR Warszawa, Jarzyna and others have focussed on the so-called ‘in-yer-face’ wave of playwrights who rocked Britain’s theatre establishment in the 1990s. Sarah Kane was at the vanguard of this, ever since her debut play, Blasted, rocked the theatre establishment in the mid-1990s.
Watching Jarzyna’s production of 4.48 Psychosis, what’s surprising is how literal his approach is. Perhaps this is down to expectations of what theatre from Poland is about in terms of style, from actors guru Jerzy Grotowski’s notion of ‘Poor Theatre’ to the even more looming figure of Tadeusz Kantor and his impressionistic interventions.
In some ways, Kane’s published text invites an approach more in keeping with Kantor and Grotowski’s free-spirited dynamics. Presented on the page without characters, stage directions or indeed any conventional notion of a plot, 4.48 Psychosis reads more like an impressionistic tone poem or incantation, an internal monologue from some divided self letting rip. What Jarzyna has done is put a girl, a boy and a break-up at the play’s heart, and, with a psychiatrist on board, shows exactly what happens following the end of an overwhelming, obsessive and ultimately self-destructive affair.
As Jarzyna has already commented elsewhere, taking about the influence of his mentor Krystian Lupa, whose own productions in Edinburgh have made considerable waves, “That which is in you and hurts…working with actors, and in a more general sense, the production you want to make, must derive from your own experiences, the problems you want to confess.”
With this in mind, perhaps it should be noted that when Jarzyna first directed Ceielecka in 4.48 Psychosis five years ago, they were partners. Now they are not.
As a play, 4.48 Psychosis’s antecedents are many. In literature, one can recognise a similar torrent of rage in Sylvia Plath’s poem, Daddy. In psychiatric word-play, it resembles R.D. Laing’s two volumes of poetic dialogues, Knots and Do You Love Me? In song, She’s Lost Control is a self-explanatory study of mental anguish by Joy Division, Kane’s favourite band. Like Kane, Ian Curtis, the singer of the band formerly known as Warsaw hung himself, becoming the post-punk generation’s first live fast-die young martyr.
In drama, beyond the writers who so influenced Kane’s generation of theatre-makers, resonances of Kane are scattered throughout Martin Crimp’s play, Attempts On Her Life, produced two years before Kane’s death. There are traces too in Anthony Neilson’s audacious fantasia on mental illness, The Wonderful World Of Dissocia, which so took Edinburgh by surprise a couple of years back. There was even a song called 4.48 Psychosis released by Tindersticks, a band steeped in the trappings of lush melancholy. Kane too, it seems, has become, if not a martyr, then a poster girl of sorts for a disaffected generation desperately seeking a cause to call their own.
All these associations race through one’s mind as Cielecka’s character puts herself through hell, exposing every inch of her pain as she tears physical and emotional chunks out of herself before the play’s inevitable end. Once the show’s over, it’s the silence you notice first. There’s no curtain call or applause. Compared to the anticipation of earlier, the audience appear drained, as though it’s tapped into some inner collective yearning. However much they may empathise as they move out into the Warsaw night, the film star they’ve just watched onstage is almost certainly feeling it more.
The next day, Cielecka and Jarzyna are being interviewed in separate rooms. There’s an ante-room between them, where they can occasionally come up for air.
“It’s very interesting coming back to it now,” Jarzyna reflects in his office. “When we first did it, it was important for us to concentrate on the new, because this sort of work wasn’t that common in Poland. It seemed very controversial and provocative. People presumed we were trying to shock them. Now, we are more established, and this sort of thing is more accepted. People seem more open somehow. They listen more. Polish theatre has always been emotional, but in a more traditional, romantic way. When I read 4.48 Psychosis it felt like it was Sarah Kane was giving her last message, but it felt very classical as well. It’s such an honest play that it can’t help but be personal.”
Across the hall, Cielecka appears healthily removed from the gut-spilling of the night before. Close up, she’s even more striking than she is onstage. Unadorned by either make-up, fake blood or the pained expression of her character, she looks fresher, and, considering what she puts herself through in 4.48 Psychosis, surprisingly unaffected by it all. Beyond her sunny façade, however, pushing herself through such emotional extremes must leave her drained. Does it not, one wonders, run the risk of affecting her more than she might like?
“Sometimes I feel it more than others,” she admits, “but as an actress I have to be honest, otherwise there would be no point in doing it. It’s important for me to go away from the play and do things that are lighter. But I don’t mind risk,” she says, her face beaming “Risk is cool.”
It’s been a long couple of days for Cielecka and Jarzyna, who’ve had to revisit a collaboration that began what must feel like a lifetime ago, and which Cielecka at least has to put herself through again later that night. For now, though, all is quiet.
Then, at the same time, the doors of each room open, and, for the first time that day, Cielecka and Jarzyna come face to face. Taken by surprise, they peer out at each other, smile a little awkwardly, then say a few words in Polish. In that one split-second meeting, there’s recognition, professional respect and affection, all wrapped up in a frisson of intimacy. Then, like figures marking time on a clock, Cielecka and Jarzyna go back inside their respective rooms, the door never quite closing behind them.
4.48 Psychosis, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, August 15-17, 8pm
The Herald, July 26th 2008
ends
The fact that Sarah Kane, whose final play, 4.48 Psychosis, is the one onstage, has become so iconic since her death in 1999, probably helps. The presence of a major film star in the lead role too is a bonus for what looks like being a major attraction in this year’s Edinburgh International Festival.
Magdalena Cielecka is blonde, beautiful, and above all else, a brilliant actress. In Poland, she’s a star from a recurring role in TV soap opera, Magda M. Onstage, Cielecka appeared in Tony Kushner’s Angels In America and a stream of boundary-pushing contemporary classics. More recently, she was one of the leads in Katyn, a bleak look at the Stalinist murder of Polish soldiers during World War Two. Directed by Poland’s greatest director, Andrzej Wajda, Katyn was nominated for an Oscar, raising Cielecka’s profile even more.
4.48 Psychosis director Grzegorz Jarzyna is one of a new breed of theatre makers in Poland who concern themselves with the contemporary. As artistic director of TR Warszawa, Jarzyna and others have focussed on the so-called ‘in-yer-face’ wave of playwrights who rocked Britain’s theatre establishment in the 1990s. Sarah Kane was at the vanguard of this, ever since her debut play, Blasted, rocked the theatre establishment in the mid-1990s.
Watching Jarzyna’s production of 4.48 Psychosis, what’s surprising is how literal his approach is. Perhaps this is down to expectations of what theatre from Poland is about in terms of style, from actors guru Jerzy Grotowski’s notion of ‘Poor Theatre’ to the even more looming figure of Tadeusz Kantor and his impressionistic interventions.
In some ways, Kane’s published text invites an approach more in keeping with Kantor and Grotowski’s free-spirited dynamics. Presented on the page without characters, stage directions or indeed any conventional notion of a plot, 4.48 Psychosis reads more like an impressionistic tone poem or incantation, an internal monologue from some divided self letting rip. What Jarzyna has done is put a girl, a boy and a break-up at the play’s heart, and, with a psychiatrist on board, shows exactly what happens following the end of an overwhelming, obsessive and ultimately self-destructive affair.
As Jarzyna has already commented elsewhere, taking about the influence of his mentor Krystian Lupa, whose own productions in Edinburgh have made considerable waves, “That which is in you and hurts…working with actors, and in a more general sense, the production you want to make, must derive from your own experiences, the problems you want to confess.”
With this in mind, perhaps it should be noted that when Jarzyna first directed Ceielecka in 4.48 Psychosis five years ago, they were partners. Now they are not.
As a play, 4.48 Psychosis’s antecedents are many. In literature, one can recognise a similar torrent of rage in Sylvia Plath’s poem, Daddy. In psychiatric word-play, it resembles R.D. Laing’s two volumes of poetic dialogues, Knots and Do You Love Me? In song, She’s Lost Control is a self-explanatory study of mental anguish by Joy Division, Kane’s favourite band. Like Kane, Ian Curtis, the singer of the band formerly known as Warsaw hung himself, becoming the post-punk generation’s first live fast-die young martyr.
In drama, beyond the writers who so influenced Kane’s generation of theatre-makers, resonances of Kane are scattered throughout Martin Crimp’s play, Attempts On Her Life, produced two years before Kane’s death. There are traces too in Anthony Neilson’s audacious fantasia on mental illness, The Wonderful World Of Dissocia, which so took Edinburgh by surprise a couple of years back. There was even a song called 4.48 Psychosis released by Tindersticks, a band steeped in the trappings of lush melancholy. Kane too, it seems, has become, if not a martyr, then a poster girl of sorts for a disaffected generation desperately seeking a cause to call their own.
All these associations race through one’s mind as Cielecka’s character puts herself through hell, exposing every inch of her pain as she tears physical and emotional chunks out of herself before the play’s inevitable end. Once the show’s over, it’s the silence you notice first. There’s no curtain call or applause. Compared to the anticipation of earlier, the audience appear drained, as though it’s tapped into some inner collective yearning. However much they may empathise as they move out into the Warsaw night, the film star they’ve just watched onstage is almost certainly feeling it more.
The next day, Cielecka and Jarzyna are being interviewed in separate rooms. There’s an ante-room between them, where they can occasionally come up for air.
“It’s very interesting coming back to it now,” Jarzyna reflects in his office. “When we first did it, it was important for us to concentrate on the new, because this sort of work wasn’t that common in Poland. It seemed very controversial and provocative. People presumed we were trying to shock them. Now, we are more established, and this sort of thing is more accepted. People seem more open somehow. They listen more. Polish theatre has always been emotional, but in a more traditional, romantic way. When I read 4.48 Psychosis it felt like it was Sarah Kane was giving her last message, but it felt very classical as well. It’s such an honest play that it can’t help but be personal.”
Across the hall, Cielecka appears healthily removed from the gut-spilling of the night before. Close up, she’s even more striking than she is onstage. Unadorned by either make-up, fake blood or the pained expression of her character, she looks fresher, and, considering what she puts herself through in 4.48 Psychosis, surprisingly unaffected by it all. Beyond her sunny façade, however, pushing herself through such emotional extremes must leave her drained. Does it not, one wonders, run the risk of affecting her more than she might like?
“Sometimes I feel it more than others,” she admits, “but as an actress I have to be honest, otherwise there would be no point in doing it. It’s important for me to go away from the play and do things that are lighter. But I don’t mind risk,” she says, her face beaming “Risk is cool.”
It’s been a long couple of days for Cielecka and Jarzyna, who’ve had to revisit a collaboration that began what must feel like a lifetime ago, and which Cielecka at least has to put herself through again later that night. For now, though, all is quiet.
Then, at the same time, the doors of each room open, and, for the first time that day, Cielecka and Jarzyna come face to face. Taken by surprise, they peer out at each other, smile a little awkwardly, then say a few words in Polish. In that one split-second meeting, there’s recognition, professional respect and affection, all wrapped up in a frisson of intimacy. Then, like figures marking time on a clock, Cielecka and Jarzyna go back inside their respective rooms, the door never quite closing behind them.
4.48 Psychosis, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, August 15-17, 8pm
The Herald, July 26th 2008
ends
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