BUCKETS O’ BECKETT
So last week at Splinter Group’s two-evening “mini-fest” of Beckett plays, all of which are directed (by Matt O’Brien and Craig Bradshaw) with rare intelligence and a pitch- perfect understanding of Beckett’s worldview, I kept wondering how much of what I was watching sprang from Beckett’s attempts to leave actors and directors less and less room for “error”–i.e., individual interpretation.
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In Play, the work being rehearsed at the time Beckett voiced his desire for an actorless theater, he did everything in his power to stifle his actors’ more actorly impulses. His stage directions have all three characters immobilized in gigantic urns, from which only their heads, facing forward, protrude. Beckett further limits them by noting that the actors’ faces should “remain impassive throughout” and their voices “toneless except where expression is indicated.” Their sole means of communicating: Beckett’s words.
Compared to Play, Krapp’s Last Tape (written five years before) is full of activity–Krapp eating a banana, walking around his place, pawing through his box of tapes. Most of this, though, is secondary to the central action of the play: Krapp at age 69, listening to a tape of himself made when he was 39. Like the three actors in Play, Matt O’Brien is given very little room in which to communicate Krapp’s pathetic state. But he manages to do so with disarming ease. O’Brien spends much of his time on stage just sitting and listening, transfixed by this voice from 30 years past –and the sad look on his face speaks volumes.
