Exploring the agonies of a tortured mind

Not exactly the stuff, one might think, for entertaining theatre.

Think again. If entertainment includes understanding other people's lives, which indeed is the very essence of theatre, then Grzegorz Jarzyna's treatment for the Polish TR Warszawa Company takes the audience through one of the most intense hour-long theatre experiences imaginable.

What he gives us, in one sense, is Kane's suicide note.

Supposedly, the witching time of night is 4.48am, when the spirit is at its lowest ebb.

Magdalena Cielecka takes us on a final journey through the circles of mental hell, of isolation, self-hatred and lovelessness.

If at first we find her self-obsession irritating, through the power of her performance, we are slowly drawn into an empathy which is painful, even unnerving.

She rebounds from a series of anonymous characters, including a psychiatrist, her father and her lesbian lover, none of whom touches her empty existence.

The set, which is apparently a huge public lavatory, emphasises the colourless vacancy of existence, as does the use of the sentimental pop song When I Fall in Love.

Kane's work has been described as post-dramatic theatre. A theatre which, we are told, frees itself from narrative, character and even the communicative social power of language.

But not here. Maybe the eastern European historical experience recognises a world of despair with a more sympathetic affinity than the British.

Kane's work is certainly more performed in Europe than at home.

As the Edinburgh Festival audience poured out of the theatre, I found myself hoping that no-one who might be experiencing similar mental anguish was among them. This is dangerous theatre.

GORDON PARSONS