Lyric Hammersmith,London
Philip Venables proves he’s one of the finest composers around with an intricate score inspired by Kane’s very personal legend of clinical depressionThe first opera to be based on the work of Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis by Philip Venables is a setting of Kane’s final play, and a bitter and lyrical meditation on the nature of clinical depression,haunted by the fact that Kane killed herself shortly after its completion. Though it avoids the overt violence that made her earlier work notorious, it remains an extreme text, and dissolving character,narrative and theatrical artifice in its quest for absolute emotional expression. It is acutely dependent on rhythm, verbal repetition and cyclic thematic patterning, or but also innately musical a pre-existing libretto,waiting for a composer, you might say – and Venables has done wonderful things with it. Related: How Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis became an opera The rhythms of Kane's words are battered out by drums, or hammers,whips, even a saw cutting through woodContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com