One of my highlights of the Sydney Festival was the visiting Gate Theatre from Dublin’s production of a of three works by Samuel Beckett. The Gate Theatre under the direction of Michael Colgan mounted these productions to mark the centenary of Beckett’s birth. The works chosen were ‘First Love’, ‘Eh Joe’, and ‘I’ll Go On’. Each of the plays was solo pieces performed by internationally renowned actors.
Ralph Fiennes performed ‘First Love’, directed by Michael Colgan. This was one of Beckett’s earliest post war novellas and revealed much of Beckett’s brand of black humour and uncomfortable truths.
Fiennes plays the narrator who is expelled on the death of his father from his room and takes refuge on a park bench by a canal, and meets a woman who takes him home. On a bare stage apart from one singular park bench, Fiennes held the audience captive as the darkly comic unfolded.
Charles Dance performed the piece ‘Eh Joe’. This was a piece of theatrical dynamite. The drama only went for a little more than half an hour but moved with unrelenting force.
The scenario has Joe sitting in a room sealed off from the world. He hears a woman’s voice, an ex lover’s voice, talking to him, luring him to examine the aspects of his life. It is a very dark and intense contemplation.
‘Eh Joe’ was originally devised for television and has been given a stage adaptation by renowned director Atom Egoyan. The woman’s voice was provided by acclaimed actress, Penelope Wilton.
Beckett’s writing in this piece is just so raw and vulnerable. What gave the piece even greater power was that Egoyan used a technique where he filmed, in huge blow-up, Dance’s face as the narrative unfolded. The images of Dance’s face were projected onto a huge screen that was mounted on stage.
In this way, ‘Eh Joe’ made this a vehicle for an actor at the height of his powers. Dance gave a stunning performance, as every gesture, every expression, every intonation, added weight to Beckett’s words.
Irish actor Barry McGovern performed the piece ‘I’ll Go On’, directed by Colm O Briain. McGovern is held in high regard as one of the leading interpreters of Beckett’s work. The evening combined extracts from some of Beckett’s prose writing, including ‘Molloy’, ‘Malone Dies’, and ‘The Unnameable’ and wove them into continuous, coherent whole that contained the essence of the works. McGovern’s work was brilliant as he transversed some difficult Beckett work.
Summing up, it was a tremendous experience to see the Dublin Gate Theatre’s three Beckett productions. It was a rare and exciting privilege to see a few of the works of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers performed to such a high standard.