|
That Which Remains: Dramaticules by Samuel Beckett
THEATER ARTICLE Fragmented, Obtuse, Brilliant January 10, 2003 We mean this in the best of ways. Robert Leigh is a whore. The guy has directed or helped manage shows and theaters from the Laguna Playhouse and UC Irvine to the Long Beach Playhouse and Cal State Long Beach and recently joined the board of directors at the Vanguard Theatre Ensemble. This month, he’s directing at the Chance Theater in Anaheim, and what he’s directing ranks among the most ambitious productions at a small theater in recent memory: Samuel Beckett’s "That Which Remains". These four short plays, or dramaticules, are for smart people—not because of erudite language or heady ideas, but just because they’re really fucking weird. All four show Beckett at his most fragmented, obtuse and brilliant. "Act Without Words II" is a 10-minute mime piece in which two performers, A and B, begin the play inside two large sacks. Prodded into action by a two-wheeled goad, A’s movements are, Beckett says, "slow, awkward and absent," while B’s are "brisk, rapid and precise." "Play" consists of three heads, each protruding from an urn. Provoked into speech by a spotlight, each relates his role in a bitter love triangle. The most accessible is "Krapp’s Last Tape". On the awful occasion of his birthday, a 69-year-old listens to a tape of his 39-year-old voice. The play features one of Beckett’s greatest lines on aging, fatality and defiance: "Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back." The fourth play is "Come and Go", in which three old women reminisce about their school days. It features 121 words and at least that many cryptic pauses. According to Leigh, the reason for staging the plays is to show how relevant Beckett’s minimalist, form-challenging plays are to contemporary audiences—and even to those audiences who will come after us. "A thousand years from now, the works of Samuel Beckett may be the most lucid expression of the state of affairs in the 20th century and the most reasonable explanation for that which remains," he says.
[top]
THEATER REVIEW The Joy of Nothing January 30, 2003 It’s tempting to think that when Samuel Beckett reached his own existential abyss, he neither screamed in terror nor laughed at the absurdity. If his life imitated his art, a wry grin creased his face, a belch escaped his lips, he thought momentarily of sex, and he began writing. Beckett knew that life was a joke—but a serious joke that meant nothing and everything. That’s why his plays are shot through with defiance and defeatism, obtuseness and stark clarity, toilet humor and lyricism, a profound sense of sadness and a bizarre sense of joviality. He did all this with an economy of words and a force of vision that, when told well, can be breathtaking to behold. When told poorly, it can be a dreary stretch. Robert G. Leigh’s production of the four Beckett plays in "That Which Remains" realizes Beckett’s incomparable ability to communicate so much while saying so little. Using a roster of mostly young actors who, I’m guessing, have little experience with Beckett’s demanding rhythms and form-rattling excursions, Leigh still captures the irritating frustration and spellbinding brilliance that make Beckett a formidable artist. Leigh is obviously a Beckett aficionado. You see that in the program when he quotes the aging Beckett describing the increasingly arduous task of writing as a process in which each word seems "an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness." But Leigh also appreciates Beckett’s clowning, directing several of his actors toward likeable performances that may rankle Beckett purists but which allow another entry point into the playwright’s work. "That Which Remains" contains a couple of Beckett burps, but the evening is bookended by two of his meatiest short plays. Things start well with "Play", in which three people (Lisa C. Zaradich, Jocelyn A. Brown and Patrick Sweetman) are buried up to their necks in urns. Through the use of long pauses, repetitive speech and bursts of dialogue sparked by harsh spotlights, we discover that they’re condemned for eternity to replay a love triangle over and over. The technical elements and performances blend perfectly, giving a horror-film ambiance to the proceedings. The next two pieces are, relatively speaking, Beckett lite. "Act Without Words II" is a mime piece, in which Man A (Matt Deller) and Man B (Casey Long) begin the play encased in plastic garbage bags. Both are prodded to life by a long, metal, claw-like device. Man A’s movements are slow and lethargic; Man B is lively and energetic. Both actors do fine jobs, but even for Beckett, there just isn’t much here. Same goes for "Come and Go", in which three impeccably dressed women (Heather Howe, Alex Bueno and Letitia Chang) talk about . . . something. The fine performances can’t cover for Beckett’s slim theme, and I fantasized about the Snickers bar I’d enjoy at intermission. Things pick up after intermission with an excellent rendition of "Krapp’s Last Tape". Everything about this piece—from the harsh lighting and vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder to the perfectly detailed set and Ken Rugg’s awesome portrayal of Krapp—works perfectly. Rugg captures the profound loneliness and silliness of Krapp, who, on the occasion of his birthday, replays a tape of himself recalling lost love and fading dreams some 30 years earlier. This is Beckett’s best short play, and through Rugg’s performance and the precise technical elements, you get a genuine sense of the man’s obsession. By play’s end—with Krapp slumped at his table, overwhelmed by either the weariness of life, the weight of memory or just one banana too many—you genuinely care about this guy and, by extension, every other Eleanor Rigby out there. Like an abstract expressionist painting, people walk away from Beckett with wildly divergent readings. He befuddles, inspires, pisses off, touches, bores, challenges, induces sleep, amuses—or all that or nothing. By directing him in neither overly irreverent nor reverential fashion, Leigh gives you the choice to decide whether what you’re watching is inspired theater or a waste of time. Ideally, you’ll walk away realizing it’s both—and you’ll appreciate Beckett for that gift.
[top]
THEATER REVIEW Four Bows for Beckett January 30, 2003 An Irishman who mainly wrote in France, Samuel Beckett has been called one of the most influential writers of the modern age. He was responsible for revolutionizing the novel and playwrighting forms. "Murphy," "Malone Dies," "Waiting For Godot," and "Endgame" have become classics. Beckett was a pessimist, who wrote about suffering, boredom and habit. His silences often spoke louder than his words and, for his amazingly inventive body of work, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Typical of a life, stepping to his own drum, Beckett didn’t show up for the ceremony. The Chance Theater is currently presenting a collection of four short but intense one act plays, by Beckett, that is bound to keep you off balance, amused, thinking and moved to tears. The four parts that make up "That Which Remains" consist of "Play," "Act Without Words II," "Come and Go" and "Krapp’s Last Tape." In "Play," the characters appear on stage as disembodied heads, emerging from three large separate vases. The subject is fidelity, or lack there of, and the dialogue is rapid fire. These heads — who have plenty to say — only speak when hit directly by the spotlight. In fact, the fellow running the lights seems to be "conducting" the rhythmic word play. The effect is that of a very profound Swiss bell ringer. Actors Lisa C. Zaradich, Jocelyn A. Brown and Patrick Sweetman are startling and (pardon the pun) "urn" the audience’s admiration. "Act Without Words II" is done completely in pantomime. A mysterious probe reaches out to one of two bags of "trash." Man "A" awakens, crawls out of his bag, and starts his day. He is slow moving and relies on prayers and a few pills. Eventually, he moves his bag just beyond the second bag and retires again. The probe now reaches out for the bag of Man "B" and prods him awake. Full of energy and dedicated to his daily regimine, Man "B" completes his tasks and — after moving just one space beyond Man "A" — calls it a day. This is a study in contrast and a comment on progress. Matt Deller and Casey Long speak no lines but command all attention. Three lovely women — Heather Howe, Alex Bueno and Letitia Chang — meet on a bench in "Come and Go." They speak of the old days and old ways. And, when each leaves for a moment, becomes the object of salacious gossip. Costumes, by Howe, consist of close-fitting suits with fur collars and large broad-brimmed hats. The lighting — by Long — is from the neck down, adding to the mystery and frustrating any glimpse of recognition. They were quietly intriguing and left us wanting more. Taking the final bow was Ken Rugg in "Krapp’s Last Tape." Gray-haired and red-nosed, Krapp sits at his desk listening to an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. It is his own voice from 30 years ago we hear, reminiscing about life and lost loves. Occasionally he will eat a banana and sway to an unheard song in his head. Often hopeless and lonely, Krapp finally realizes that he wouldn’t want to return to his youth, if it meant giving up the current "fire in his belly." Rugg was touching in a sort of a lumpy Jack Nicholson I-should-have-taken-better-care-of-my-self fashion. Director Robert G. Leigh has uniquely presented an interesting and unusual evening of theater. Nothing was "normal" and yet it worked. His salute to Beckett — who died in 1989 — was heart-felt. As good as this is, however — had he still been alive — Beckett probably wouldn’t have showed up for this one either. That was just his way. I’m just glad that I did. I’ll be mulling over "That Which Remains" — happily — for some time to come!
[top]
THEATER REVIEW Chance puts Beckett in a good
light February 2, 2003 Hats off to the Chance Theater for staging "That Which Remains," a collection of four one-acts by Samuel Beckett. The playlets represent the absurdist playwright at his most abstruse, and they're the type of theater most local venues would refrain from staging for fear of alienating their subscribers. The Chance's risk pays off, for with director Robert G. Leigh at the helm, the one-acts - "Play," "Act Without Words II," "Come and Go" and "Krapp's Last Tape" - are alternately puzzling, thought-provoking and mysterious. As such, they're much like life itself: Watching them makes you question the multiple meanings of existence. In many ways, this staging recalls Grove Theater Center's "The Beckett Project" of three years ago, which presented a similar bill of fare. Of the four scripts, "Play" must be regarded as the most oblique. Its characters are three clay heads, each atop its own piece of pottery. The pots on each end are female; the center, male. As each head is lighted, it begins to speak - at first, all three at once and, gradually, separately, in monologues. The meaning of their words is at first hard to decipher. After a few minutes, you realize that the man has been involved romantically with each of the women, that he was married to one and carried on an affair with the other and that this episode ended violently. Just to be certain we catch all of the nuances, Beckett repeats long strings of previously spoken dialogue, as each of the characters recounts the affair from his or her own point of view. As the adulterous "Man," Patrick Sweetman is quizzical and oblivious. Lisa C. Zaradich has a sharp and shrewish but gradually more plaintive tone as "Woman 1" (the wife), and Jocelyn Brown is frightened and vulnerable as "Woman 2" (the mistress). Ghoulish makeup, the disembodied look of the heads and Casey Long's harsh lighting create an effect that's creepy, but there's more to "Play": To the male character, the affair was all "just play" - a clever bit of wordplay by Beckett - and "Play" makes you realize the absurdity of the intense energy expended on something ultimately as insignificant as the trite, selfish emotions these characters feel, confirmed by the final segment, in which all three seem to be fervently praying. "Come and Go" is similarly a three-character play, but with a different dynamic. The three characters, named Flo (Heather Howe), Vi (Alex Bueno) and Ru (Letitia Chang), appear to be close friends. Seated on a bench, facing us, their mannerisms and speech are nearly identical to one another. As soon as Flo makes an exit, the other two begin to gossip about her. Flo returns, resuming the facade of friendship. Next, Vi leaves and the pattern repeats itself, then again with Ru. Not one of the three can escape gossip by the other two, but, as the scene's denouement exhibits, they're strangely interdependent. True to form, Leigh, aided by Howe's costumes, depicts these hypocritical souls as society matrons. The longest of the four playlets, "Krapp's Last Tape" is a one-man scene depicting Krapp (Ken Rugg), who seems to be engaged, in isolation, in some sort of research project requiring an audio station, a reel-to-reel tape recorder and dozens of catalogued boxes of tapes. Krapp's various actions, and the shards of information we gain by hearing parts of his tapes, lead us to tentative conclusions: That Krapp is isolated, that he may be suffering an alcohol-related illness, that he has documented much of his life on tape. He spends his last day much as before - reliving his life via his tapes, almost obsessively returning to one particular tape and zeroing in on his memoir of a perfect evening of romantic bliss from his younger days. Fragmented as this play is, the effect is staggeringly poignant. Leigh's staging gains immeasurably by the performance of Rugg, who chuckles in amusement in reaction to hearing his own character's words played back to him. The actor is a deft physical comedian, and his ornate diction recalls the screen persona of W.C. Fields. "Act Without Words II" is easily the evening's most accessible play, a wordless depiction of two men (Matt Deller, Casey Long) whose cyclical routine of activity seems a metaphor of life itself. It's their approaches that are diametrically opposed: Deller's rote existence is joyless, fueled by pills and prayer; Long's reflects the chipper efficiency and self-reliance of a soul undaunted by the mind-numbing monotony of human life. Both men, especially Long, are skilled pantomimists whose characters' actions add up to zero in the vast gray universe of Beckett's existentialism.
[top]
|