'Dyskinesia' Overwhelms Audience with Despair

Author: Suzanne Mozes

Understanding that the Hepburn Zoo provides a unique venue for experimental work that otherwise would not be carried by larger, professional theaters, Director Christopher Richards '03 took advantage of this opportunity with "Dyskinesia." Richards' version of Sarah Kane's final play, "4.48 Psychosis," premiered at Middlebury College this past weekend. Richards bravely ventured into Kane's stream of consciousness play with singular insight. Because Kane evaded scene partions, stage directions, character names, division in character lines or even a setting in her original manuscript, the play provides a unique prospect for its director.
Essentially, "Dyskinesia" is a directorial free-for-all dealing with content that has a weight unlike anything I've seen performed in the Zoo. It's all about suicide. Generally, Kane's fans and supporters interpret "4.48 Psychosis" as her suicide notice to the world.
Because the script focuses on her own endless battle with depression, the fight against taking medication, the struggle with unsympathetic doctors and her own self-mutilation, self-hate and self-love, the performance requires careful treatment. However, the content moves beyond these immediate themes with prose writing, concepts on death and self-conscious wit. The overwhelming, complicating material could quickly repel its audience members.
Despite the challenges "4.48 Psychosis" presents, Richards chose it particularly because he felt that the "sterile" and "dry" readings masked as performances that he had seen in Oxford, England while studying abroad debased Kane's brilliance. This dissatisfaction spurred him to add movement and gesture in his own interpretation, which he felt would illuminate Kane's words.
After reading the script over and over again, "certain voices began to emerge," that eventually evolved into five nameless characters. Eliza Hulme '05, cast as the central voice, parallels Sarah Kane. After watching Hulme in "Zooprints" and "The Stranger," Hulme undoubtedly gave her best performance in this independent project. She particularly found the essence of Kane's intense emotional voice in the final scene as she sits upon the white spiral on the black floor, swirling into the depths of her character's depression with a smattering of pills spread out before her. Hulme released from herself and into this voice.
Parker Diggory's '04 wry smile revealed the omniscient wisdom her character held as an already fallen soul, providing discomfort for the audience at large because of her disrespect for us.
As Hulme's lover, Gale Berninghausen '05 added somewhat believable depth to the performance, but as her debut, she must be applauded for jumping into this project. Ben Fainstein '04, Hulme's psychiatrist, fit the conservative character with a purposeful flatness.
Lastly, Alex Rhinehart beautifully portrayed his abstract character, especially in executing the number sequences with a rhythmic dancing, first broken, and then fluid. He preempts Hulme's final act of despair with his own suicide.
Unfortunately, in hindsight, I agree with Richards when he said the play "may have been better served with less actors." Rhinehart's beautiful movements added too much to this already overwhelming script.
His presence, and even sometimes Diggory, asked too much interpretation of the audience. Also, Richards created Rhinehart's character to accent Hulme's persona as another depressed individual.
He wished to offset the extreme isolation of only one depressed character. However, I feel that this acute seclusion and loneliness actually defines the severe depression individuals face. In conceiving this character, Richards undermines Hulme's true seclusion from life.
Lines presented by Hulme, instead, would have complemented the overall idea, perhaps, more cohesively. Yet, Richards understood that placing more responsibility on the central character would have placed too much pressure on one actor while undertaking a full course load.
Set against a severe black and white set, the characters, clad in the same severity, created a dynamic that also failed to correspond with the concept of depression.
In varying degrees, depression exists in a spectrum of gray shadows that eventually darken into a lifeless void -- suicide. The develop character's emotions, specifically Hulme's progression towards death, fail to correspond with their actual emotional locality between this white and black world.
Regardless, Richards' directorial choices for scenes reflected his insight into Kane's play. He understood the audience's needs for viewing "Dyskinesia." Introducing humor in Hulme's relationship with her doctor, Richards could then emphasize serious scenes such as "ritualistic pill scene." After Rhinehart hangs himself, the noose remains hanging onstage as a reminder that "death has been introduced." This instrument of utter dejection, while distracting, demonstrates Richards' powerful use of props.
While Kane did not like to use music in her plays, Richards consciously went against these wishes and used the "minimalist, incidental" violin and piano compositions of Phillip Glass and Micheal Nyman that I particularly relied on to soothe my nerves between intense scenes.
After Kane committed suicide in 1999, Kane's brother, Simon Kane, pointed out that "it is understandable that some people will interpret the play as a thinly veiled suicide note" but, he explained, "this simplistic view does both the play and my sister's motivation for writing it an injustice."
Expanding beyond the written word, Richards understood this. Using hierarchical placement, gesture, humor coupled with despair, and movement, Richards presented an astute reading of Kane's "4.48 Dyskinesia."