IF YOU GO
What:4.48 Psychosis by Sarah KaneWhere: Naked Stage production at Pelican Theatre, Barry University, 11300 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores, through May 18When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. SundayCost: $25 (seniors $18, students $12)Info: 1-866-811-4111, www.nakedstage.org or www.theatermania.comSomething rare -- rare for South Florida theater, anyway -- is happening now at The Naked Stage.
Most of the region's companies play it realistic and straight, producing scripts that tell clear stories from beginning to end. That can make for engrossing, satisfying drama, but audiences usually don't have to work too hard to extract the play's themes.
Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis is not one of those plays.
Written in the months before the 28-year-old British playwright took her own life, 4.48 Psychosis is a reflection of its author's brilliant, tormented mind.
It is nonlinear, surreal, disturbing, upsetting. The script has no stage directions or character delineations, not even specifying how many actors should perform it. In many ways, it is simply a blueprint, a starting place for a creative director, actors and designers to construct their own interpretation of Kane's determined march toward oblivion.
Director Paul Tei, a trio of actors and the Naked Stage designers deliver an incredibly vivid, wildly imaginative production, one full of shocks (including a very realistic bathroom visit and a nude rant behind a clear shower curtain), fleeting tenderness and driving despair. An intense Katherine Amadeo plays the suicidal patient, Kim Ehly her at-wit's-end lover, Erin Joy Schmidt the latest in a long line of doctors trying to hold death at bay. The Dali-like set, by Amadeo's husband (and Naked Stage co-founder) Antonio Amadeo, makes it clear that the play's locale is the patient's mind -- that place where delusions, obsessions and dark dreams meet.
Understandably, you might think going in that watching 4.48 Psychosis will be a completely depressing experience. Not so. Tei and the actors find moments of giddy release, respite through sensual connection, the possibility of hope. Some of the attempts at brightness -- a cheery preshow announcement, a couple of dance sequences, the patient standing at a microphone to sing snippets of the Herman's Hermits tune Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter -- feel at odds with the tone of the play. But for the most part, Naked Stage achieves a cohesive, powerful production.
Sound designer Marty Mets and lighting designer Sevim Abaza have done intricate, startling, subtle work that is of a piece with Amadeo's set. Now and then, a giant ''4:48 a.m.'' -- the hour when Kane often awoke, her demons relatively quiet -- is projected onto a wall. At one point, as the patient tosses and turns, the sounds of dripping water, a ticking clock, her thudding heart and barking dogs combine to create an insomniac's symphony.
Great pain can sometimes fuel powerful art. 4.48 Psychosis at The Naked Stage provides insight into a gathering tragedy.
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
