Theatre in Review: Beckett Briefs (Irish Repertory Theatre)

	F. Murray Abraham. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Samuel Beckett's career consisted of one long distillation. His breakthrough piece, Waiting for Godot, typically runs two and a half hours; his penultimate work, Catastrophe, clocks in at six minutes. This several-decade-long process of shrinkage benefited his art; his vision was always highly theatrical, making effective use of minimal scenery, provocative staging ideas, and sound effects. But was he a dramatist? His vision, as hard as anthracite, evokes a world in which conflict inevitably withers, events (if they happen at all) are meaningless, and the only certainty is the slow erosion of time; in other words, it is the opposite of drama. In the words of Walter Kerr, a lifelong Beckett skeptic, "Godot is the only play I know of that is seminal and terminal at once."

Godot counts as Beckett's mission statement if you will, and, with the right cast and director, its longueurs can be subdued. (A West End revival last fall with Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw was, apparently, a roaring success; can New York be far behind?) But, for reasons known only to the playwright, each new play grew shorter until he achieved something like the theatrical equivalent of telegrams. That these compact works have a blunt force that cannot be denied. A trip to the Irish Rep will confirm this notion; under Ciaran O'Reilly's highly disciplined direction -- allowing for one or two odd decisions -- these Beckett Briefs glisten like black diamonds.

Arguably Beckett's most shocking work -- and, counterintuitively, inspired in part by Caravaggio's Beheading of John the Baptist -- Not I is a ranting monologue by a woman represented onstage only by a pair of ruby-red lips. It is a cataract of words and phrases detailing a life of appalling desolation; the effect is of a brain bursting open, its contents flooding out. ("There were so many of these old crones," Beckett recalled, "stumbling down the lanes, in the ditches, beside the hedgerows. Ireland is full of them.") The text comes rushing at us at such velocity that one can barely take it in; still, an indelible impression is formed of a life without love or comfort, spent on the edge of madness. Its success depends entirely on the actress taking on this seemingly insuperable challenge and thanks be to Sarah Street, who seizes one's attention with the first breath and refuses to let go. Watching Not I delivered in Street's frantic whisper is tantamount to being grabbed by the lapels and held against a wall; her energy and commitment never flags.

Not I is written to feature a character known as the Auditor, a request more honored in the breach than the observance. And, making a choice I haven't seen before, O'Reilly has Street's lips in constant movement, floating in an impenetrable void. Even for a lighting designer as precise as Michael Gottlieb it must be a daunting challenge. He never misses a cue, but I wonder if it is the right choice, as it distracts one from the astonishingly dense text. Even so, this rendering of Not I never surrenders its grip, not for a split second.

Play was described by the actor and writer Gilles Sandier as "Feydeau beyond the grave." You could say it is Beckett's wicked take on the eternal triangle. The characters -- wife, husband, and lover -- are confined to funeral urns, only their heads visible. Each has his or her say about the tawdry affair, speaking almost entirely in cliches laced with spite. ("When I was satisfied it was all over, I went to have a gloat. Just a common tart. What he could have found in her when he had me.") Yet, the bizarre framing, combined with the actors' rapid-fire delivery (sometimes talking over each other), turns these sordid doing into a bleakly amusing cabaret. No one takes a longer view than Beckett, and here lust, reduced to ashes, leaves behind only a residue of malice. Again, precision is the thing; Street, Roger Dominic Casey, and Kate Forbes deliver brilliantly, aided by Gottlieb's pinpoint lighting.

A portrait of an embittered, impoverished artist (so one assumes) listening to audio tapes from the past and taking stock of failing powers, Krapp's Last Tape attracts only the most agile actors, in this case, F. Murray Abraham. Dressed by Orla Long in an unwashed shirt and pants, his unkempt hair beating a northward retreat across his cranium, his eyes fixed on some other temporal plane, the actor makes his character a magnificent wreck. He may be losing the plot, too; note how, holding a tape, he draws out the word "spool" as if it possesses magic powers. ("Reveled in the word spool," he notes. "Happiest moment of the past half million.") Then again, he is acidly accurate about his past failures: "Seventeen copies sold, of which eleven at trade price to free circulating libraries beyond the seas." A beat, then he adds, "Getting known." Like the voice in Not I, his life is profoundly solitary: "Crawled out once or twice, before the summer was cold. Sat shivering in the park, drowned in dreams and burning to be gone. Not a soul." Unlike her, however, he is haunted by memories of desire. The actor's attention to detail and his ability to evoke the text's dried-up fragments of sensual joy guarantee that this is a Krapp's Last Tape to remember.

O'Reilly has set the pieces with a jeweler's care, although one regrets the decision to bookend and separate the pieces with original music by Ryan Rumery. Surely, the silence of the grave is what is wanted; during the performance, I joked to myself that the music was covering up the sound of Beckett whirling in his grave. Once one is inside each piece, one forgets the intrusion; still, this isn't the ideal solution. Rumery and M. Florian Staab's sound design is otherwise impeccable.

Nevertheless, this concentrated dose of Beckett's writing, running only seventy-five minutes, goes a long way toward explaining the enormous shadow he continues to cast across the contemporary theatre. Nearly seventy years after he first got the world's attention, the stark purity of his writing has lost none of its power. These plays evoke laughter that is often hard to distinguish from a death rattle, which, alas, may be why he never goes out of style. This evening, subtitled "From the Cradle to the Grave," is an itinerary Beckett mapped out with chilling exactitude. --David Barbour