22 June 2006
West ends
Atom Egoyan's production of the half-hour Samuel Beckett play "Eh Joe" — written for TV in 1965 and given its stage premiere by Egoyan in May at the Gate Theatre Dublin as part of the Beckett centenary festival — is moving to London's West End for 30 performances starting June 27. It stars the great Michael Gambon.
09 June 2006
Dieppe
«Again the last ebb
the dead shingle
the turning then the steps
toward the lighted town
my way is in the sand
flowing between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life, on me
my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to this end
my peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease
from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant
where every instant spills in the void
the ignorance of having been without
this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the paintings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust
what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness
I would like my love to die
and the rain to be falling on the graveyard
and on me walking the streets
mourning the first and last to love me»
SAMUEL BECKETT / 1948
the dead shingle
the turning then the steps
toward the lighted town
my way is in the sand
flowing between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life, on me
my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to this end
my peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease
from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant
where every instant spills in the void
the ignorance of having been without
this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the paintings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust
what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness
I would like my love to die
and the rain to be falling on the graveyard
and on me walking the streets
mourning the first and last to love me»
SAMUEL BECKETT / 1948
Scouting from the rooftop
As You Lake It
Gogo and Didi get their feet wet in Harlem's post-Katrina Godot
«The best summary of Waiting for Godot may be Act II's first stage direction: " Next day. Same time. Same place." Samuel Beckett intended that "same place" to be a country road, but in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's boisterous new production, the locale has been radically shifted to a rooftop above a flooded landscape, a slope of shingles replacing the script's mound, three feet of water covering the rest of the set. Vladimir and Estragon find themselves in a kind of post-Katrina New Orleans, enduring their existential comedy half on top of their isolated building, half in the water that surrounds it. Call this Wading for Godot.
Director Christopher McElroen and designer Troy Hourie's production is not for purists. Or for Beckett himself, who was famously resistant to reconceptions of his plays. Their loss. While not perfect, CTH's literally splashy production—Pozzo arrives in an inflatable dinghy pulled by Lucky—demonstrates how misplaced such dramaturgical rigidity can be. McElroen exploits Godot's inherent flexibility, the room the script allows for reimagining and rehearing; it's an underused, often resisted aspect of the play's genius. McElroen may go too far, though, with his Katrina references (scrawling "GODOT!" as a rescue cry on the rooftop, for example). The flood imagery is evocative and fun, but tying the play too tightly to one historical event diminishes some of its necessary opaqueness.
The Classical Theatre of Harlem can be counted on for strong acting, and Godot is no exception. J. Kyle Manzay makes a sweetish Gogo; Chris McKinney plays Pozzo with a vigorous frustration (though he could ratchet up his menace). Billy Eugene Jones is an affecting Lucky, almost always chest-deep in water. But this Godot belongs to Wendell Pierce's Didi. A bearish clown one moment, a lost soul with hangdog eyes the next, Pierce—through this comic, moving portrayal—shows just how humane the theater of the absurd can actually be.»
by Brian Parks @ Village Voice
...
"Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett
Classical Theatre of Harlem
645 St. Nicholas Avenue
212-868-4444
Gogo and Didi get their feet wet in Harlem's post-Katrina Godot
«The best summary of Waiting for Godot may be Act II's first stage direction: " Next day. Same time. Same place." Samuel Beckett intended that "same place" to be a country road, but in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's boisterous new production, the locale has been radically shifted to a rooftop above a flooded landscape, a slope of shingles replacing the script's mound, three feet of water covering the rest of the set. Vladimir and Estragon find themselves in a kind of post-Katrina New Orleans, enduring their existential comedy half on top of their isolated building, half in the water that surrounds it. Call this Wading for Godot.
Director Christopher McElroen and designer Troy Hourie's production is not for purists. Or for Beckett himself, who was famously resistant to reconceptions of his plays. Their loss. While not perfect, CTH's literally splashy production—Pozzo arrives in an inflatable dinghy pulled by Lucky—demonstrates how misplaced such dramaturgical rigidity can be. McElroen exploits Godot's inherent flexibility, the room the script allows for reimagining and rehearing; it's an underused, often resisted aspect of the play's genius. McElroen may go too far, though, with his Katrina references (scrawling "GODOT!" as a rescue cry on the rooftop, for example). The flood imagery is evocative and fun, but tying the play too tightly to one historical event diminishes some of its necessary opaqueness.
The Classical Theatre of Harlem can be counted on for strong acting, and Godot is no exception. J. Kyle Manzay makes a sweetish Gogo; Chris McKinney plays Pozzo with a vigorous frustration (though he could ratchet up his menace). Billy Eugene Jones is an affecting Lucky, almost always chest-deep in water. But this Godot belongs to Wendell Pierce's Didi. A bearish clown one moment, a lost soul with hangdog eyes the next, Pierce—through this comic, moving portrayal—shows just how humane the theater of the absurd can actually be.»
by Brian Parks @ Village Voice
...
"Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett
Classical Theatre of Harlem
645 St. Nicholas Avenue
212-868-4444
You must have it all
Samuel Beckett: Grove Centenary Edition
edited by Paul Auster (Grove Press, 4 vols., $100)
«With 2006 marking Beckett's 100th birthday, a slew of so-so biographies and humdrum critical works on the 1969 Nobel laureate's canon are hitting stores. But the only place to re-energize your Beckett expertise is by reading the man and revisiting his absurd, disturbingly funny works. Typically described with the blanket oversimplification "minimalist," each of Beckett's adjective-barren sentences is stripped down to reveal the despair in the mundane and the humor in that despair—the essence of his famous quote, "When you are in the ditch, there's nothing left to do but sing." Though you need not buy the entire set, you should. In the words of Salman Rushdie's foreword, "This is Samuel Beckett. This is his great work. It is the thing that speaks. Surrender."»
by Karla Starr
edited by Paul Auster (Grove Press, 4 vols., $100)
«With 2006 marking Beckett's 100th birthday, a slew of so-so biographies and humdrum critical works on the 1969 Nobel laureate's canon are hitting stores. But the only place to re-energize your Beckett expertise is by reading the man and revisiting his absurd, disturbingly funny works. Typically described with the blanket oversimplification "minimalist," each of Beckett's adjective-barren sentences is stripped down to reveal the despair in the mundane and the humor in that despair—the essence of his famous quote, "When you are in the ditch, there's nothing left to do but sing." Though you need not buy the entire set, you should. In the words of Salman Rushdie's foreword, "This is Samuel Beckett. This is his great work. It is the thing that speaks. Surrender."»
by Karla Starr
The Word
«We need to be clear in our social debates and in our intentions, both as individuals and as a nation. Words matter. As Samuel Beckett once said, "Words are all we have." If we can no longer call something by its correct name, then we will soon lose the ability to think clearly. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but we have all agreed on calling that particular flower a "rose" - when one says it smells like a rose, you instantly know what the thing smells like. Let us not call a rose by anything else. To do so would be dishonest.»
by Greg Crosby
by Greg Crosby
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
