Beckett Centenary
This year marks the centenary of the birth of the author Samuel Beckett, who was born in Dublin in 1906.
My experience of Beckett’s work is very limited. I have not see his most famous play "Waiting for Godot" and the only thing I had seen before was "Krapp’s Last Tape". I saw this in a highly praised production featuring John Hurt as Krapp but I must admit it didn’t do much for me.
Being in London over Easter weekend gave me a chance to sample more of Beckett’s writing at the Centenary Festival at the Barbican. I attended the pit theatre and saw a double bill of two short plays.
The first, "Play", consists of three characters sitting in urns, so that only their heads are visible. As the curtains open, the stage is dimly lit and the three characters are all mumbling at the same time. Then a spotlight moves from face to face as they each speak in a rapid monotone. Once the dialogue is completed, there is a short pause, and then the whole procedure is repeated.
As the fractured conversations emerged it became clear that the three characters are a man, his wife and his mistress. The wife is unhappy about the man having a mistress, the mistress is unhappy because the man will not quite leave his wife for her and it ends up with both women giving him the push and him on his own and missing them both.
At least I think that’s what it was all about, because as well as being rapid and monotonous, the speech was also very quiet, so it was very difficult to catch many of the words. Even hearing it twice.
The second play was "Catastrophe", set in a 1940s film studio as a director and his assistant control the movements and positions of an actor. It is a play about power and control and there were some subtle ideas about those concepts explored in this production: the assistant’s extraordinary walk, a mixture of a ‘power’ walk and the mincing of a dolly-bird secretary; the subtle interplay over lighting the director’s cigar: at first the assistant rushes to him to apply the light to the cigar but, on the final occasion, the assistant requires the director to cross the stage to where she is in order to get his light.
The production originated in Dublin and was directed by Selina Cartmell. I had better declare an interest here - one of her brothers was my pupil and another is a good friend of mine. But I am not just being loyal to friends when I say I enjoyed the evening very much (including a wonderful post-performance party with the cast at Selina's brother’s smart London flat) . The best compliment I can pay the director, cast and author is that it generated enough interest in me that I would now look out for more Beckett to try.
My experience of Beckett’s work is very limited. I have not see his most famous play "Waiting for Godot" and the only thing I had seen before was "Krapp’s Last Tape". I saw this in a highly praised production featuring John Hurt as Krapp but I must admit it didn’t do much for me.
Being in London over Easter weekend gave me a chance to sample more of Beckett’s writing at the Centenary Festival at the Barbican. I attended the pit theatre and saw a double bill of two short plays.
The first, "Play", consists of three characters sitting in urns, so that only their heads are visible. As the curtains open, the stage is dimly lit and the three characters are all mumbling at the same time. Then a spotlight moves from face to face as they each speak in a rapid monotone. Once the dialogue is completed, there is a short pause, and then the whole procedure is repeated.
As the fractured conversations emerged it became clear that the three characters are a man, his wife and his mistress. The wife is unhappy about the man having a mistress, the mistress is unhappy because the man will not quite leave his wife for her and it ends up with both women giving him the push and him on his own and missing them both.
At least I think that’s what it was all about, because as well as being rapid and monotonous, the speech was also very quiet, so it was very difficult to catch many of the words. Even hearing it twice.
The second play was "Catastrophe", set in a 1940s film studio as a director and his assistant control the movements and positions of an actor. It is a play about power and control and there were some subtle ideas about those concepts explored in this production: the assistant’s extraordinary walk, a mixture of a ‘power’ walk and the mincing of a dolly-bird secretary; the subtle interplay over lighting the director’s cigar: at first the assistant rushes to him to apply the light to the cigar but, on the final occasion, the assistant requires the director to cross the stage to where she is in order to get his light.
The production originated in Dublin and was directed by Selina Cartmell. I had better declare an interest here - one of her brothers was my pupil and another is a good friend of mine. But I am not just being loyal to friends when I say I enjoyed the evening very much (including a wonderful post-performance party with the cast at Selina's brother’s smart London flat) . The best compliment I can pay the director, cast and author is that it generated enough interest in me that I would now look out for more Beckett to try.
posted by Alnwickian at 7:26 am
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