By Lee, Veronica Alan Ayckbourn, so theatre lore has it, is the second-most performed British playwright after Shakespeare. So why has he become so unfashionable among theatre cognoscenti? Partly, it's his own doing.

By Joyce McMillan 4:48 PSYCHOSIS KING'S THEATRE IF EVER there was a dramatic text that looked more like a score for performance than a conventional play, it's Sarah Kane's extraordinary final work 4:48 Psychosis, written shortly before her death in 1999.

By Susan Mansfield IT IS hard for us Brits to get our heads round the idea that some of our finest playwrights are better known abroad than at home. When Sarah Kane took her own life in 1999, a minute's silence was held on German radio.

By LUKE GRUNDY Theatre 4:48 PSYCHOSIS King's Theatre EDINBURGH Nine years ago, theatre-goers were mourning the loss of a talented young playwright whose history of depression translated into intense works on the stage.