murraybramwell.com

February 24, 2015

Memories are hit and miss

Adelaide Festival

Memories are hit and miss

Beckett Triptych:
Footfalls, Eh Joe and Krapp’s Last Tape
by Samuel Beckett
State Theatre Company of South Australia
Scenic Workshop and Rehearsal Room
Adelaide Festival Centre.
February 24. Tickets: $ 31 – $ 69
Bookings : adelaidefestival.com.au
BASS 131246.
Until March 15.

Jean Paul Sartre said that hell is other people, but for Samuel Beckett it is much closer to home. “You know that penny farthing hell you call your mind”, says the scathingly reproachful woman’s voice in Eh Joe, “That’s where you think this is coming from, don’t you ?” For Beckett’s characters, consciousness is a prison and memory a rebuke, and if being inside your own head is not hell, then it is certainly a form of purgatory.

In State Theatre Company’s excellent Adelaide Festival Beckett program – their triptych, with side panels, Eh Joe and Footfalls, and Krapp’s Last Tape as centrepiece – the themes of fading recollection and inconsolable regret are foremost.

Performed in the Rehearsal Room and Scenic Workshop in the lower depths of the Festival Centre, these three works remind us of the spare, poetic intensity of Beckett’s shorter works. Tautly directed by Corey McMahon, and subtly lit by Chris Petridis, Eh Joe, originally written for television in 1965, depicts a man in a dressing gown retreating into a shuttered bedroom only to find a woman’s voice (Pamela Rabe) taunting him with memories of his cruelties to past lovers, including one who suicides.

Joe, splendidly played by Paul Blackwell, sits motionless on the bed while a camera edges slowly closer, sending a live video feed on to a scrim screen across the stage. His face and eyes loom ever larger as the enormity of his transgression is revealed.

Footfalls is a dialogue between a woman, May (Pamela Rabe) and her unseen elderly mother (expertly voiced by Sandy Gore). Like a penitent in Limbo, May trudges from one side of the stage to the other –“seven, eight, nine, wheel” while her mother’s voice beckons and demands. Dressed in Victorian Gothic grey, Pamela Rabe memorably redefines quiet desperation. Geordie Brookman’s direction carefully confines the action, as does Ben Flett’s chiaroscuro lighting.

Krapp’s Last Tape is a Beckett favourite with a brilliantly simple premise. Krapp, now aged 69 is looking back on his life at 39, trying to fathom his earlier self. Using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, he plays old spools documenting his thoughts on life and love, only to discover he does not recognise or remember.

Directed by Nescha Jelk and featuring veteran actor Peter Carroll, this segment is a more mixed success. Ailsa Paterson’s rag and bone décor, with towering heaps of old furniture, fills the cavernous stage area in the Scenic Workshop but it dwarfs and distracts from the central focus – a table, an overhead light, and an old man pondering his fragmented life. Peter Carroll’s distinctive voice invigorates the recordings, but as Krapp in real time, his alienation is sometimes too quizzical to engage us. That said, Beckett Triptych is a winning opener to the festival.

Murray Bramwell

“Memories are hit and miss” The Australian, February 27, 2015, p.14.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment