Elsewhere, round-about and suchlike

On The Deckchair - a new site for reading and writing about Brighton and Hove, built using the CommunitySites software - you can read my thoughts about the myriad eccentricities that clutter up the streets of the town. Elsewhere on the site, you can find out which books I'd save from the waves if the contents of my shelves were about to be swept out to sea.

Words are very much my thing (what, you noticed?), but I've also just bought myself a new camera, with inevitable consequences. Among them, the renewal of my long-standing graffiti obsession, although I've slightly lost touch with who's who since that obsession was at its peak. But I've been experimenting with other subjects too, and some of the results are really not that bad. Especially if you're a fan of bumble bees.

Samuel Beckett: A Piece of Monologue / The Expelled

There's no escaping it: it's bloody hot. Filthy hot. London is melting all around us, stinking and sweaty; the Underground appears to be disintegrating...and, frankly, it has my sympathies. Back when we booked all of this, another evening of Beckett shorts at the Calder Bookshop seemed like a splendid idea. Come the time, and come the oppressive heat, leaving behind the merciful sea breeze to get on a train to the capital is akin to pouring away a bottle of water in the desert.

Still, we're here, survival kits and all. If it's bad for us, it must be nigh on unbearable for the actors: Peter Marinker spends the twenty-ish minutes of A Piece of Monologue stock-still in his nightgown and socks, probably cursing Beckett's lack of foresight in failing to include any brow-mopping opportunities in the stage directions. Heroically, he appears to lose himself in the character entirely; the key is letting the writing do the work, something that, I imagine, appears very much easier than it is. Especially in these conditions.

But once you let the music play, it takes you to some wonderful and some terrible places. A Piece of Monologue is as I recall it from several years ago: longer than you'd like it to be by a few minutes. As back then, I suspect that it's not accidental. The drawn-out end is intensely sombre and bleak and not at all comfortable; Marinker delivers it beautifully, stirring up little eddies of emotion at key moments that contrast with the sedate pace elsewhere. The imagery is gloomy, thunderous. Torrential rain. My God, now that you mention it, some torrential rain would be really nice....

A short and welcome interval, and we have The Expelled, one of a cluster of very fine post-war short stories that form some of Beckett's most accessible and entertaining work. It's a terrific piece, enormous subtlety and profundity hidden behind some belting comedy; it rewards you richly for digging into its depths, finding its stumbling sense of displacement. It hides a lot of sadness, I think.

But it already has a voice in my head. And it's not Anthony Jackson's voice, frustratingly. There's a coarseness missing, somehow. We both feel it. Much as Jackson gives it plenty of gusto, his rather thespian tones never really suggest that he's actually been kicked out of his lodgings into the gutter, hat following behind. Or any of the rest. We saw John Hurt perform a few snatches of this a few weeks ago and you believed him. That's an unfair comparison, I know. But an unavoidable one.

We escape into the air. It isn't any cooler, really, but there's a hint of a breeze for the sake of form. This series of productions is already proving to be much more than a mere footnote to the Beckett centenary. More than just a product of laudable enthusiasm too. Small-scale, sure, but that fosters its own sense of intimacy, of being in the same place. As A Piece of Monologue proves, the magic is just at home here as anywhere else, lifting the evenings beyond curiosity and interest and other faint praise.

A venture that's worth supporting, then. Perhaps starting with a collection to fund some air conditioning....

Samuel Beckett: Eh Joe

In which Samuel Beckett hits the big time. Or, to be more precise, our Samuel Beckett hits the big time. The Beckett of Waiting for Godot and Endgame is no stranger to the West End, to names in lights, to being part of a proper, dressed-up night out, albeit a slightly left-field one. But to find our Beckett - sparse and minimal and very much not everyone's cuppa (which is not-everyone's loss) - at the distinctly swanky Duke of York's theatre, quotes from newspaper reviews plastered all around, is odd indeed.

There's a glossy programme with staples and everything, for heaven's sake. Three quid too, purchased for its novelty value more than its content. And there's an elegant bar, which, absurdly, is open for an hour before...a performance that lasts for only half that time. And there are people in...well, the word "frocks" springs to mind, and it has never done so at any other point in this Beckett season. We make our way up to our seats in a state of considerable bewilderment, and the culture shock isn't greatly soothed by a precipitous drop from the front row of the circle. It's an awfully long way down. We spend the minutes until kickoff hanging on for dear life and praying that no-one tries to squeeze past us.

Then the lights dim, and the opening isn't promising. On stage, all is fine: Michael Gambon sits in gloomy silence for a couple of minutes and then potters around his room, checking for ghosts behind the doors; the scenery, only visible in this opening sequence, shows a lovely attention to detail. But there's too much distraction as a packed theatre settles in for the duration; behind us, glasses are collected at the bar, people fidget and cough, and you wonder whether this simply won't work in the context. Perhaps such intimate, still writing requires a similar setting.

And then, magic. Penelope Wilton's voice - so perfect for Beckett, as previously noted - strikes up, and the words fill the gigantic space. She has the pace just right, the rhythm and the music, and you don't need anything more than that; you're drawn in as you always are. This being our Beckett, nothing's happening; there's nothing to look at except the detail of Gambon's face, enlarged on a stage-front screen, as he sits on his bed, haunted by the memories that haunt so many of these characters. But, at the same time, there's everything to look at, paintings on the mind's eye that could be the work of nobody else.

It is compelling drama, and the silence crystallises into something clear and concentrated as that voice torments poor, beaten Joe with harrowing images of his lover's suicide. With images that he can't rid himself of. With images that we see as clearly as we see the face on the screen. I've seen the original television production on a couple of occasions, but this a much more painful, powerful piece than it appeared then. It leaves its mark, and it doesn't fade quickly.

And so, Beckett hits the big time...and you still sit there, focused on every word and forgetting to breathe. So does everyone else, it seems. Maybe it's not so strange, after all. Maybe it's how things ought to be, perhaps without the vertigo....

Samuel Beckett: That Time / What Where

More....

It's been roughly three months since the start of the Barbican's Beckett festival, the first of several events to mark the centenary of his birth. In those young and innocent and now rather distant days, we were full of bright-eyed enthusiasm; this is our ninth production since, at the Barbican and elsewhere...and, well, we're still full of enthusiasm, even if it isn't quite so bright-eyed any more. Another four dates are already booked into the diary. Mind you, we could've seen even more if we were really hardcore.....

For the first time, we're at the Calder Bookshop, the back room of which serves as a second-hand section during the day and a theatre by night. A very small theatre: three rows of chairs, with a thin strip of stage at one end. Samuel Beckett isn't about scale, though. Here, the Godot Company is currently presenting an intriguing series of productions of short Beckett works, its contribution to the on-going celebrations. Much too good to be missed, yet again.

For the first half hour, the territory is familiar. None the worse for that, of course: That Time is one of those lovely Beckett pieces that you could listen to forever, one of those that you wish more people were aware of. Once you've cleared your mind of workaday clutter and found that essential rhythm, the writing is marvellous: a broad smudge of memories, occasionally broken by the bold blue of a sky or a golden field of wheat. Something of Van Gogh, in my mind's eye. The three voices ebb and flow, fold back and open out, until expiring with their grinning host. Lovely, as I say.

The evening's revelation, then, is second on the bill. What Where, Beckett's last play, turns out to be a quite remarkable thing, and not only because it requires energetic choreography that appears quite impossible in such a confined space. Only ten minutes long, its terse analysis of dictatorial power appears to lack depth upon first viewing, a mere breakdown of power structures into repetitive actions, everything stripped of humanity. As ever, it is fascinating to watch this most wonderful of writers - sharp of intellect, yet so generous of heart - confront something new; it feels as if something has been lost in the process, though.

As a post-performance discussion unfolds, however, it strikes you that much of Beckett is very much still here. Existence perpetuating itself through habit, ritual, repetition; existence extinguishing itself through that process. A stark loneliness, inescapable. And then, we're very kindly offered the opportunity to see it performed again...and much more is revealed the second time around, not least the gleaming precision of the analysis. The savage paranoia of fascism stripped clean, reduced to an undeniable equation. It is a remarkable piece of writing.

For a change.