There's an awful lot to say about Krapp's Last Tape. An awful lot. In some ways, it's easily lost amid the numerous landmarks in Beckett's canon, bridging the distance between the surrealism of his early dramatic works and the refined, still minimalism that later became characteristic. It's neither and both, and so much more than a necessary bit of process.
Indeed, its structure - shifting memories and images from three ages of the same man, recorded, played and replayed via his taped diaries - is audacious and inspired, even by Beckett's remarkable standards. A kind of theatrical cubism, if you like. Or something. In lesser hands, this could've been an innovative shambles. These are not lesser hands, though: the effect is a portrait of a lifetime, drawn bold and harsh and yet with exquisite tenderness. It doesn't feel like an idea.
There is so much humanity here. In the opening stages, Beckett outlines his character with wonderfully gentle, kind touches: his addiction to bananas, his creaking shoes, his digestive problems, his playful toying with words. It's almost as if he allows Krapp to hold up the play until he's ready to begin...or until he's ready to go, perhaps. From all of this, something is created that couldn't possibly have been conjured up by a conventional narrative: in less than an hour, you know this old, broken man like a close friend. The parting is virtually unbearable.
There's an awful lot to say about John Hurt's performance too. His name draws a packed house to see a role that he's played many times before, but there's no sense of complacency; rather, it's hard to believe that this incredibly demanding part has ever been played with such bravery, such absolute determination. Such undeniable heart. Ghosts of great performances wander through many of Beckett's plays, often dominating new interpretations; Hurt has left another of those ghosts. He is truly, truly magnificent.
An awful lot to say, then. And yet, nothing at all to say. Beckett's work, in any form, is often wondrous, often capable of making language achieve extraordinary things. But it's rarely as emotionally raw as this, rarely as profoundly moving; here, the light goes out on Hurt with tears lining his lower lids, just held back from spilling. Christ, I'm trembling with the effort myself. There are moments when it's difficult not to look away, not to flinch from such complete heartbreak. And yet, that humanity keeps drawing you close again, reaching out to the lonely, shattered figure on the stage.
There is nothing to say, in the end. All of Beckett's genius, put into bringing one poor, frail, dying man to flickering life. Simply, it is beautiful and moving beyond all words.
29 April 2006
14 April 2006
Samuel Beckett: Come and Go / Footfalls
Much less familiar to me than the contents of the previous double-bill, these two pieces offer sharper contrasts and harsher edges. A little closer, perhaps, to what people imagine when they think of Samuel Beckett's later drama; a little further away, possibly, from the immediate, instinctive joy that can be found within it.
Indeed, Come and Go is unusually unsatisfying. It's a visually striking piece, to be sure: three women seated in a row, wrapped in pastel shades and veiled by the shadows of their hats. It's beautifully executed too, slow and deliberate and elegant as each figure departs in turn, leaving the others to whisper secrets in their absence. But, in the end, this is an idea, not a fleshed-out play. Of course, there are many who'd level that accusation at far more of Beckett's work, but wrongly: much of its strength comes from marrying brave, stark ideas with astonishingly rich and potent writing. There is nearly always more to a Beckett piece than meets the eye; Come and Go strikes me as being a rare exception. A diverting enough exception (and a short one too), but an exception nonetheless.
Footfalls immediately proves the point. Bare and bleak to the point of parody, this is precisely the kind of miserable nonsense that'd drive quite a lot of people to complete distraction. For five or ten minutes, even I can't quite penetrate the monochromatic blankness: the dull clonk-clonk-clonk of the footfalls as a woman wrapped in rags shuffles back and forth across the stage, occasionally chided by the creaking voice of her elderly mother. Not a great choice for a first date, put it that way.
But these pieces thrive on rhythm, music as much as drama; when you find that rhythm, you can lose yourself in it entirely. From the outside, Footfalls feels awkward, staged, overdone; when you're lost inside it, its ghostly voices and haunting figures make the air seem colder, the hush seem quieter. The writing comes alive, helped by a particularly fine performance from Justine Mitchell as May, bringing a delightful touch of youthful insolence to the daughter's relationship with her mother. There's infinite sadness here...but then, there's a brash smudge of humour near the end, laughter that's immediately overwhelmed by the sadness again. A sudden flash of purple across a canvas dominated by blacks and greys.
From the outside, the appeal is elusive. When you're inside the piece, as one with its heartbeat, Beckett's writing is brave and daring and heartfelt. Its music is stirring and magnificent, even as it is utterly still and deathly. Not for the first time, I wonder: who else can write like this? Who else can draw so deeply upon simple language? Not for the last time, I conclude: it really doesn't matter.
Indeed, Come and Go is unusually unsatisfying. It's a visually striking piece, to be sure: three women seated in a row, wrapped in pastel shades and veiled by the shadows of their hats. It's beautifully executed too, slow and deliberate and elegant as each figure departs in turn, leaving the others to whisper secrets in their absence. But, in the end, this is an idea, not a fleshed-out play. Of course, there are many who'd level that accusation at far more of Beckett's work, but wrongly: much of its strength comes from marrying brave, stark ideas with astonishingly rich and potent writing. There is nearly always more to a Beckett piece than meets the eye; Come and Go strikes me as being a rare exception. A diverting enough exception (and a short one too), but an exception nonetheless.
Footfalls immediately proves the point. Bare and bleak to the point of parody, this is precisely the kind of miserable nonsense that'd drive quite a lot of people to complete distraction. For five or ten minutes, even I can't quite penetrate the monochromatic blankness: the dull clonk-clonk-clonk of the footfalls as a woman wrapped in rags shuffles back and forth across the stage, occasionally chided by the creaking voice of her elderly mother. Not a great choice for a first date, put it that way.
But these pieces thrive on rhythm, music as much as drama; when you find that rhythm, you can lose yourself in it entirely. From the outside, Footfalls feels awkward, staged, overdone; when you're lost inside it, its ghostly voices and haunting figures make the air seem colder, the hush seem quieter. The writing comes alive, helped by a particularly fine performance from Justine Mitchell as May, bringing a delightful touch of youthful insolence to the daughter's relationship with her mother. There's infinite sadness here...but then, there's a brash smudge of humour near the end, laughter that's immediately overwhelmed by the sadness again. A sudden flash of purple across a canvas dominated by blacks and greys.
From the outside, the appeal is elusive. When you're inside the piece, as one with its heartbeat, Beckett's writing is brave and daring and heartfelt. Its music is stirring and magnificent, even as it is utterly still and deathly. Not for the first time, I wonder: who else can write like this? Who else can draw so deeply upon simple language? Not for the last time, I conclude: it really doesn't matter.
10 April 2006
Samuel Beckett: Prose and Poetry
Not exactly the most high profile events in the Beckett Centenary Festival programme, these two hour-long selections of prose and poetry readings appear to exist mainly to reward the brave, prepared to take a punt and pay fifteen quid (twice) for something entirely mysterious. Blind faith tells us that we won't be listening to a jobbing actor mumbling incomprehensibly into a book for an hour, while we shift uncomfortably and gaze longingly at the exit. And blind faith is duly rewarded....
It's a shame, in many ways. Were the uninitiated present, there would be few better introductions to the lesser known reaches of Samuel Beckett's work than these relaxed, mildly jovial strolls through various novels, short stories, plays and poems...and it does no harm at all that stars of stage and screen have turned out to be our guides.
John Hurt, it transpires, looks exactly like John Hurt, to the point of caricature. If you bother to think about it, you already know what clothes he was wearing; I need not waste our time with a description. This is somehow comforting. Charles Dance is a more elegant presence, albeit therefore a slightly incongruous one; Beckett's language feels resistant to his strident, confident voice, whereas it fits the Irish tones of Alan Stanford and Barry McGovern like a battered, comfortable old shoe, and you get the impression that both have been tramping around joyously in these passages since childhood. And then, on both evenings (and in the same outfit, I note on behalf of my companion), there's Penelope Wilton. The presence of someone who's been in Doctor Who adds a certain gravitas to proceedings, in our eyes.
The beauty of the format - sixteen readings on each occasion, none out-staying its welcome - is that it allows you to feel Beckett's astonishing range, his sublime blending of comedy and tragedy at the very edges of existence. It may be black as black can be, but his humour sparkles and twinkles delightfully nonetheless; there are moments of pure, daft, for-the-hell-of-it hilarity when only the need to listen on prevents you from rocking back and cackling uncontrollably at the absurdity of it all. And then, from exactly the same pen and sometimes even within the same excerpt, come moments when silence descends and a deep sadness rushes through the room like a chill draught. Very few writers could master one of these.
Not everything works, of course. But there are countless treats nonetheless, both known and new. And there are, as so often with Beckett, a couple of utter revelations, both courtesy of Wilton's gentle, insistent delivery. There's a brief glimpse of Winnie from Happy Days, captured so perfectly - hopeful, fragile, deeply tragic - that the role could've been written for her; nothing is more wonderful than when Beckett's work suddenly comes into piercing focus, fresh and vivid and alive.
And, even better, there's an ambitious attempt at the complex, dense prose of Stirrings Still, in which Wilton pushes the limits of her homespun charm to astonishing effect. Shifting images of death, love, regret, and echoes closing in on each other, it's truly mesmerising. You forget to breathe. There's much that's great here, and even more that's splendidly entertaining. There's perfection too, momentary but unforgettable. And priceless, for the brave.
It's a shame, in many ways. Were the uninitiated present, there would be few better introductions to the lesser known reaches of Samuel Beckett's work than these relaxed, mildly jovial strolls through various novels, short stories, plays and poems...and it does no harm at all that stars of stage and screen have turned out to be our guides.
John Hurt, it transpires, looks exactly like John Hurt, to the point of caricature. If you bother to think about it, you already know what clothes he was wearing; I need not waste our time with a description. This is somehow comforting. Charles Dance is a more elegant presence, albeit therefore a slightly incongruous one; Beckett's language feels resistant to his strident, confident voice, whereas it fits the Irish tones of Alan Stanford and Barry McGovern like a battered, comfortable old shoe, and you get the impression that both have been tramping around joyously in these passages since childhood. And then, on both evenings (and in the same outfit, I note on behalf of my companion), there's Penelope Wilton. The presence of someone who's been in Doctor Who adds a certain gravitas to proceedings, in our eyes.
The beauty of the format - sixteen readings on each occasion, none out-staying its welcome - is that it allows you to feel Beckett's astonishing range, his sublime blending of comedy and tragedy at the very edges of existence. It may be black as black can be, but his humour sparkles and twinkles delightfully nonetheless; there are moments of pure, daft, for-the-hell-of-it hilarity when only the need to listen on prevents you from rocking back and cackling uncontrollably at the absurdity of it all. And then, from exactly the same pen and sometimes even within the same excerpt, come moments when silence descends and a deep sadness rushes through the room like a chill draught. Very few writers could master one of these.
Not everything works, of course. But there are countless treats nonetheless, both known and new. And there are, as so often with Beckett, a couple of utter revelations, both courtesy of Wilton's gentle, insistent delivery. There's a brief glimpse of Winnie from Happy Days, captured so perfectly - hopeful, fragile, deeply tragic - that the role could've been written for her; nothing is more wonderful than when Beckett's work suddenly comes into piercing focus, fresh and vivid and alive.
And, even better, there's an ambitious attempt at the complex, dense prose of Stirrings Still, in which Wilton pushes the limits of her homespun charm to astonishing effect. Shifting images of death, love, regret, and echoes closing in on each other, it's truly mesmerising. You forget to breathe. There's much that's great here, and even more that's splendidly entertaining. There's perfection too, momentary but unforgettable. And priceless, for the brave.
Book review: Bret Easton Ellis - Lunar Park
Going right back, I've always associated Bret Easton Ellis with the Manic Street Preachers. Perhaps - probably, in fact - they were the first to nudge my attention in his direction, part of the endless barrage of quotes, references, iconography that comprised much of their early assault on the world. They shared more than that too, maybe: a certain youthful attitude, striking poses, causing fights, burning bridges and then disappearing. You could see the mutual attraction.
The comparison still holds, pretty much. The beauty of the Manics, of course, was they'd have to grow up - well, with one notable exception - and we'd have to grow up with them. Together, we've grown a little chubbier, we've mellowed and settled and survived...and we know that we'd bore the living hell out of our former firebrand selves. That's the essence of the Manics' art, right there: youthful invective turning to sensible middle age. It's not a sell-out, it's just how things go.
And thus, twenty-or-whatever years on, we get a Bret Easton Ellis novel about domesticity, about recovery, about compromise, about his relationship with his family. About not being a twenty-something it-bloke any more. It is, naturally enough, not nearly that simple, but neither is it the taut, barbed sneering with which he made gazillions of dollars and an entirely justified reputation. It'd be brave, if it wasn't an inevitable part of the process of growing up, something unavoidable. He can't write the same novel again, much as we might wish him to.
That's fine, then. What's hard to swallow is the mediocrity. Because there's a lot of middle ground between the glassy, dead-eyed prose of Ellis' best work and the tumbling, gulping confessional that comes out of the last pages of Lunar Park. Once you've got beyond a startlingly audacious opening chapter, and before you reach that highly emotive conclusion, you have to live with one overwhelming truth for several hundred pages: Bret Easton Ellis confronting American suburbia turns out to be a whole lot less interesting than you'd imagined.
Too much of Lunar Park is filled with surprisingly weak satire and lazy, obvious observation; too much of the rest comes across as frantic horror schlock rather than, as admirably intentioned, a breakdown into surreal, delusional paranoia. Having abandoned his old voice, and quite understandably so, Ellis never finds a new, distinctive style to replace it here, and never comes close to matching the compulsive, stunning rush of his early novels. It feels uncomfortable, almost unfinished. It feels recycled. Too much time in the studio, perhaps.
And thus, we have something unprecedented: a Bret Easton Ellis novel that's merely all right. Not great, not awful, just all right. It had to happen, in the end.
The comparison still holds, pretty much. The beauty of the Manics, of course, was they'd have to grow up - well, with one notable exception - and we'd have to grow up with them. Together, we've grown a little chubbier, we've mellowed and settled and survived...and we know that we'd bore the living hell out of our former firebrand selves. That's the essence of the Manics' art, right there: youthful invective turning to sensible middle age. It's not a sell-out, it's just how things go.
And thus, twenty-or-whatever years on, we get a Bret Easton Ellis novel about domesticity, about recovery, about compromise, about his relationship with his family. About not being a twenty-something it-bloke any more. It is, naturally enough, not nearly that simple, but neither is it the taut, barbed sneering with which he made gazillions of dollars and an entirely justified reputation. It'd be brave, if it wasn't an inevitable part of the process of growing up, something unavoidable. He can't write the same novel again, much as we might wish him to.
That's fine, then. What's hard to swallow is the mediocrity. Because there's a lot of middle ground between the glassy, dead-eyed prose of Ellis' best work and the tumbling, gulping confessional that comes out of the last pages of Lunar Park. Once you've got beyond a startlingly audacious opening chapter, and before you reach that highly emotive conclusion, you have to live with one overwhelming truth for several hundred pages: Bret Easton Ellis confronting American suburbia turns out to be a whole lot less interesting than you'd imagined.
Too much of Lunar Park is filled with surprisingly weak satire and lazy, obvious observation; too much of the rest comes across as frantic horror schlock rather than, as admirably intentioned, a breakdown into surreal, delusional paranoia. Having abandoned his old voice, and quite understandably so, Ellis never finds a new, distinctive style to replace it here, and never comes close to matching the compulsive, stunning rush of his early novels. It feels uncomfortable, almost unfinished. It feels recycled. Too much time in the studio, perhaps.
And thus, we have something unprecedented: a Bret Easton Ellis novel that's merely all right. Not great, not awful, just all right. It had to happen, in the end.
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