4.48 Psychosis
Is the contemporary view that depression is the result of a chemical imbalance any more accurate than the turn-of-the-century notion that “neurasthenia” was best treated by imposing silence, isolation, and bed rest on the mostly upper-class women it affected? Both courses of treatment reflect or reflected societal ideas of the “normal”; both are or were well-meaning attempts to relieve suffering. But it’s possible both are wrong.
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Graney’s deliberately strange staging is pitch-perfect, displaying the Hypocrites’ trademark refusal to flinch at onstage action other troupes might omit or gloss over. Just as at the end of Machinal the company threw an electrocution in the audience’s face, here it tackles first a hanging, then a drowning at the very end. The sense of jeopardy is so real, particularly with the drowning, that you want to come to the rescue: just standing there seems to show a terrible complicity in the abuse of power. As it is the play’s action isn’t over until an actor asks, “Will you open the curtains, please?” and the lights come down in time for Stoltz to abandon the part she’s playing and live.
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