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Beckett was adamantly precise in his stage directions, often specifying the number of steps an actor should take or the seconds a pause should last. When American Repertory Theatre broke from the stage directions for Endgame in 1985, employing a multiracial cast and setting the play in a defunct subway station, Beckett was enraged. He and his publisher threatened to sue, sent telegrams, released press statements, and were about to pull production rights when, in the final hours before the show, an agreement was reached. The show went on, but both Beckett and ART’s artistic director Robert Brustein inserted statements in the program. Beckett denounced the show; Brustein defended the right to artistic freedom.
Turner’s new piece basically cuts and pastes the separate works. Purists can rant and rave that Beckett’s work is being destroyed. But people have tampered with Beckett scripts before, and they’ll do it again. With a certain Beckettian irony, the action will irritatingly repeat itself.
Like the young Krapp, Opener in Cascando is a writer obsessed by love, “terrified again of not loving, of loving and not you, of being loved and not by you.” Turner enforces the connection between Krapp’s Last Tape and Cascando by giving Opener the lines usually spoken on tape by Krapp at age 39. It’s as if Turner has given a past to Krapp with Cascando, filling in the holes that Beckett deliberately left empty.
