play it again, Sam
Beckett Trilogy
Samuel Beckett, best known for Waiting for Godot, is an acquired taste, and this trilogy of his work is no exception. The fi rst piece, Act Without Words II, is entirely mimed, and of the three actually proves to hold audience attention the most. It features two men, ‘A’ (Aled Roberts) and ‘B’ (Ben Martin), and revolves around their contrasting reactions to waking up in the morning.
Both actors accentuate their body movements to convey effectively an insight into the characters’ personality types. Although it is diffi cult to decipher the authorial intention, this encourages the audience to explore a number of possible interpretations. It is a diffi cult piece that has been executed well by this production. The director, Eleanor Fellowes, has put these three Beckett plays together in the hope of examining “the mechanics of the theatre”.
The pieces progress from the silent movement of Act Without Words II to the stationary speech of the fi nal piece, Play. However, Rough for Theatre I, the second piece in this trilogy, shows a more traditional approach to theatre, which incorporates speech and motion. This play features a blind man (Brian Stewart) and a cripple (Aled Roberts), who decide to join forces to counter the effects of their disabilities.
Whilst the dialogue sometimes grows boring, it is a well acted and intriguing sketch. The actor drawing the pieces together is Roberts, whose characters experience a progression from mime, to crippled motion with the ability of speech, to the stagnant aphasia of the fi nale. This last is by far the most surreal piece of the trilogy since it features three characters who only have their heads visible.
While this will remind many history students of decapitated heads being displayed on spikes, these heads do not belong to the executed but rather to the three members of a love triangle who proceed to tell their story. Sadly, apart from Roberts, the speech of the actors is slurred and inaudible, rendering the piece somewhat tedious. Overall this is a creative and ambitious idea, but as is often the case with Beckett, it has limited appeal depending on your taste.
16th Feb 2006