Five Challenging Plays to See in Sydney This August

4:48 Psychosis is the last play penned by British playwright Sarah Kane before her suicide in 1999. That the manuscript was left in an envelope with her suicide note probably gives you a fair idea of what you’re in for here. Variously described by critics as ‘a deeply personal howl of pain’ and ‘written in the almost certain knowledge that it would be performed posthumously’, Kane’s final work, one imagines, is as difficult to stage as it is to watch. The script is a puzzle, with no setting, no characters and no delineations for dialogue. When the Royal Court first staged the play a year after her death, they had several different groups of actors gather for readings in an attempt to assign voices to certain segments.

Regardless of how Red Line Productions choose to stage it, this is difficult material. One interpretation of the script paints a consciousness (with or without a body is unclear) in turmoil, raging against uncomprehending medical staff and itself in equal measure. But many reviews of past productions have also written of the playfulness of the text and a surprising humour. Kane never flinched from the grit and unpleasantness of existence, but almost two decades after being written, 4:48 Psychosis also burns with energy and ferocity.

This one’ll be hard going, but the rewards are there for those who can tough it out.

Adapted from Ken Kesey’s beast of a book, Cuckoo’s Nest is the tale of Randall McMurphy, a small-time criminal admitted to a mental institution for evaluation. A scoundrel and fierce free thinker, McMurphy befriends the other ‘inmates’ and begins to school them in the art of revolt. With sedition beginning to waft through the corridors, McMurphy’s bid for freedom is opposed by Nurse Ratched, a character who has come to represent the unflinching evil of bureaucracy.

Sport for Jove have set themselves a real task with this one. Kesey’s book is filled with monstrous shadows, bending time and demons struggling to maintain a human form. But its nightmarish qualities are offset by characters and friendships defined by tenderness and an aching timidity. The film adaptation of Cuckoo’s Nest is infamous for being one of only three films to sweep the big five – Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Its Broadway run was no less daunting, with Kirk Douglas taking the role of McMurphy and Gene Wilder playing Billy.

Uplifting and a kick in the guts at the same time, Cuckoo’s Nest is a great reminder that, as McMurphy points out, “You’re no crazier than the average asshole walkin’ around on the street and that’s it!”

Two women, one Chinese, one Indian. One a cleaner, the other a manager. Both are key players in this pseudo-fairytale about global food politics. Trippy sounding stuff, we know. But as with all ambitious projects, just crazy enough to work.

Director Lee Lewis writes with relish of meeting playwright Michele Lee at a writers’ workshop. “She didn’t have much more than an idea, an instinct, a title — Rice — and an extraordinary talent for dialogue.” In the five years since then, Rice has picked up the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award and with a successful Queensland season under its belt, is on a national tour, of which Griffin is but one stop.

Michele Lee describes the play as working on two scales, giving a glimpse of mass agriculture and the corporations that move food from the ground onto supermarket shelves, while simultaneously developing a friendship between two women from vastly different social spheres.

Rice may make you think twice before shopping in a supermarket again, but as theatre goes, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything more homegrown. Support local theatre, kids.

John Bell returns to STC in Florian Zeller’s tense, fractured thriller that places the audience inside the mind of a man afflicted with dementia.

Andre has always kept two watches — the one on his wrist and the one in his head. But with Alzheimer’s his new self-appointed timekeeper, Andre’s clocks have begun to run amuck. People walk in and out of his house at odd hours, some familiar and some not, despite many of them wearing the same face. Andre gets the sense that someone wants to throw him out of his house, but he can’t remember who. He is a man besieged by his own limitations, bitter and suspicious of all who cross his path, lest they prove to be an enemy he cannot recall.

Disorienting and terrifying, The Father is a Lear-inflected spiral into oblivion. Be sure to bring a torch — the darkness is unrelenting.

When Isaac returns from an unspecified war, he’s not expecting it to have followed him home. His house is a battlefield, his mother and newly transgender sibling are soldiers marching to secure the downfall of the patriarchy. His father, an abusive disciplinarian, has suffered a stroke and now shuffles about the house in strange clothing, seemingly lost.

Struggling to piece his life back together, Isaac has to reacquaint himself not only with civilian life, but a family too different for him to know or remember. He is still a son and a brother but his tribe are on the warpath and he represents the very thing they’ve vowed to destroy.

Playwright Taylor Mac has said the Hir manifested from memories of his hometown, Stockton in California, a place he was bursting to leave as a young man and clearly does not remember fondly. The central question, he says, is, “What responsibility do we have to something that has been abusive to us?”

Its setting may classify it as a kitchen sink drama, but make no mistake — a ticket to Hir is a ticket to war.