★★★★☆
The scene is set ten minutes ahead as soon as the stage safety curtain lifts. Clinical white walls. A chair. A table. Muzak spreads through a loudspeaker; the sounds are meant to soothe, but are about as annoying as having needles repeatedly thrust into your brain. It’s the perfect contrasting prelude for 4.48 Psychosis, Philip Venables’s adventurous opera based on Sarah Kane’s extraordinary play about clinical depression. It’s forever on edge and deeply expressive too, unlike the music heard in lifts.
Premiered two years ago at the same theatre, Ted Huffman’s production, commissioned from the Royal Opera House and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, grips and moves all over again in this first revival. Two weeks ago I saw the composer’s