It's entirely possible - and this is still sinking in, some three weeks after the event - that this might've been the last Beckett of the year.
Heavens. It had to end somewhere, and the failure to secure tickets for Harold Pinter's performance of
Krapp's Last Tape in October means that it probably ends here. In many ways, that's perfect: it seems absolutely
inconceivable that Pinter could find any way to improve upon
John Hurt's Krapp, perhaps the most monumental of all the centenary's peaks. And it'd be such a shame to end this journey with a sense of anticlimax.
Besides, this is just right. Back at
the bookshop, a triple bill of female roles offers both conclusions and fresh beginnings. In a way, it feels as if we've finished, as if there's a firm underlining and a solid full stop on the end of the sentence. All done. It feels like that watching
Footfalls, a piece that - and this is rare, contrary to perception - is just a bit obscure, a bit inaccessible. A bit
difficult. Somehow, it doesn't have the clarity and purity of Beckett's finest writing, and there's visible effort in Virginia Byron's performance as a consequence.
It isn't helped, perhaps, by the context. Some of these plays have taken on a wonderfully intimate warmth in this little backroom...but this is a ghostly world that seems to require a bigger, emptier space. It needs distance, for things to hang in the air, for footfalls to echo, for breath to become mist. As if to emphasise the point,
Rockaby immediately shows us that intimacy, that warmth...and it suddenly all works beautifully again. The most musical of Beckett's plays, it's nudged gently along by a reserved, conservative reading from Tamara Hinchco...and that's a genuine compliment, for these are lovely, familiar, cherished words that require nothing more than to be let out of the box from time to time. We briefly wonder whether the addition of an echo on the key phrase - "Time she stopped..." - falls into the category of unnecessary fiddling; we decide that it does, and yet that it just about works. Just about. But, really, when it comes to
Rockaby, you will
never be wrong if you play it safe. It ain't broke.
Which, after a short interval, leaves us with
Enough, and one last revelation for the road, the dot-dot-dot to open up that sentence once more. Because
this is why it seems impossible to tire of Samuel Beckett, why there's always something to revive your interest. Why it's never really finished. A quiet, understated performance of an unfamiliar prose piece in the back room of a bookshop...and it simply takes your breath away.
Alison Stillbeck perches on the edge of the stage, almost within touching distance, and politely implores us to understand her relationship with a mumbling, crippled, belligerent other. She does so with captivating energy, eyes shining with love, face beaming with the desire to communicate; it's more than an expressive reading, it's a striking and brilliant piece of characterisation. Apart from a brief stumble, writing and performance are in complete harmony: one, deft and subtle, with shades of humour, love and, somewhere in the background, the darkness of cruelty and abuse; the other, letting the words cascade and flutter around the room, as if re-living the most contented times. Wherever you choose to spend your evenings, you could not possibly wish to see anything finer.
The last Beckett of the year, then. Which ought to be the occasion for grand conclusions and so on and so forth...and sod it, there's no conclusion, for there's no end. This is writing that lives...sparkles and fades and always
lives. Maybe that won't be so forever; maybe there'll come a time when it's not possible to find something new and surprising in Samuel Beckett's work. Then, it'll be time for conclusions. For now....