167. A MIND-BENDING EVENING OF BECKETT
Outside the Irish Repertory Theatre, W. 22nd St.
Samuel Beckett is ubiquitous in New York
at the moment, with WAITING FOR GODOT and ALL THAT FALL receiving star-studded
productions featuring four of England’s leading actors (and let's not forget the recent Yiddish GODOT), while lesser-known
artists are giving their all in the tiny basement theatre of the Irish
Repertory Theatre in this bill of three one-acts directed with care by Bob Flanagan.
Photo: Wade-Marcus Studio.
The
program opens with ACT WITHOUT WORDS, originally written in French as a mime
and here produced with a puppet in the single role. Beckett was
fanatically strict about any alterations to his works, like having an
all-female staging of WAITING FOR GODOT, so it’s impossible to know how he
would have felt about seeing something written for a human being played by a
puppet. All we can do is admire the fact that the staging follows his very
precise instructions about how a nameless man is tossed onto a desert and
subsequently struggles to survive as, timed to the sound of an offstage (and
symbolically fraught) whistle, various objects are mysteriously flown on and
off—a palm tree, three different sized cubes, a pair of scissors, a length of
rope, and, most tantalizingly, a flask of water. Every Sisyphean effort he makes to reach
the water using the other props is frustrated, as is his attempt to kill
himself. Finally, the man just stays there, doing nothing, as nothing can be
done.
ACT
WITHOUT WORDS, like every Beckett work, has been subject to numerous critical
interpretations; by having it performed by a puppet, even more speculation as
to its meaning is invited. Ultimately, it conjures up images of man’s
hopelessness, despair, and the futility of existence, while at the same time suggesting, as so often in Beckett, that we must go on, regardless. Using a puppet makes even sharper the notion that man is the plaything of destiny.
The puppetry is borrowed directly from Japan’s bunraku theatre, where each puppet is manipulated by three puppeteers, often (but not always), as here, dressed and hooded in black. One man operates the feet, one the left arm, and one the head and right arm. The Beckett puppet has carefully articulated joints that allow it to walk and move fairly fluidly, even at its ankles, but it is much smaller than a bunraku puppet and neither its fingers nor face are capable of movement, as they are for bunraku’s leading characters. The puppeteers beautifully maneuver their puppet and his props, but one wonders nonetheless whether the playwright would have approved. Then again, since French mimes typically show no facial emotion, a puppet’s affect would not be far removed from that of a living performer, and, possibly, because of our tendency to read into a puppet as much meaning as we can, even more touching.
The puppetry is borrowed directly from Japan’s bunraku theatre, where each puppet is manipulated by three puppeteers, often (but not always), as here, dressed and hooded in black. One man operates the feet, one the left arm, and one the head and right arm. The Beckett puppet has carefully articulated joints that allow it to walk and move fairly fluidly, even at its ankles, but it is much smaller than a bunraku puppet and neither its fingers nor face are capable of movement, as they are for bunraku’s leading characters. The puppeteers beautifully maneuver their puppet and his props, but one wonders nonetheless whether the playwright would have approved. Then again, since French mimes typically show no facial emotion, a puppet’s affect would not be far removed from that of a living performer, and, possibly, because of our tendency to read into a puppet as much meaning as we can, even more touching.
BREATH,
which takes longer to set up than to perform, was originally given in the
infamous erotic revue, OH! CALCUTTA! (1969), where its presentation made
Beckett furious with the show’s conceiver, Kenneth Tynan, for adding nude
bodies where none was called for. Tynan, for his part, argued that the decision
was out of his hands and that he had nothing to do with it. Beckett asks that
it be 25 seconds in length. We see a dumping ground for trash, hear a baby’s
birth-cry, hear intensified breathing, hear another cry, and curtain. We are born. We die. Are we little more than trash?
After
a longish intermission comes the pièce de
résistance, PLAY, the minimalist piece in which three dead people are encased
in burial urns, only their crud-encrusted faces showing; one is designated as M
and the others as W1 and W2, i.e., Man (Paul Radki), Woman 1 (Sameerah
Luqmaan-Harris), and Woman 2 (Rachel Pickup). Each is covered with the same
kind of gook as is on the urns. They speak their lines at an extremely rapid pace but
only when a light, seen by critics as an interrogating force, hits their face. The timing of the light and their speeches is
always a challenging technical feat for actors in this piece, and Beckett
worked very hard to find the right method of producing the effect. In life, W1 was married to the man and W2 involved in an affair with him, a situation they go over and over, often
so quickly as to be unintelligible. They don’t speak to one another, only
straight out, as if this is a continuing monologue they must repeat forever in their eternal hell.
There’s nothing unique in the specifics of the affair, and the characters are
anonymous, Beckett’s aim seeming to be more about the musical and visual effect
of the piece than its emotional impact, although some (not I [the name, btw, of another Beckett piece]) find it moving. Some have compared it to a fugue. Again, numerous interpretations have been offered.
From left: Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris, Paul Radki, Rachel Pickiup. Photo: Wade-Marcus Studio.
Each
actor has mastered the technical requirements of speaking
their lines as rapidly as humanly possible, and with clarity and precision,
which still doesn’t make the piece any more comprehensible on first viewing.
WAITING FOR GODOT is a paragon of accessibility by comparison with PLAY, and
tired or bored spectators may take advantage for their own purposes of the
extreme darkness into which the audience is plunged for the work’s duration. Others may be hypnotized.
The
sets for A MIND-BENDING EVENING OF BECKETT are by N. Joseph DeTullio, the
costumes (the black garments worn by the puppeteers?) by Andrea Lauer, the effective
lighting by Michael Gottlieb, the eerie music and sound design by Ryan Rumery,
and the puppet by Den Design Studio. All contribute to a worthwhile introduction, perhaps even a mind-bending one, to these examples of Beckett's minor work.
