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.
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