[title]
Sometimes Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett jumped the shark. Heresy, I know, but it’s true. In the quest for innovation – stress-testing the art-form to see what it could survive – sometimes he left it looking lightweight. Once or twice, this collection, assembled by director Sara Joyce, looks an incy bit Emperor’s New Clothes.
One piece scores a real hit. ‘Catastrophe’, the third short of the evening, is made by a gurning, gangling performance from Kate Kennedy as A, the obsequious artist bowing to her philistine paymaster.
A human sculpture stands on a plinth: barefoot, hat pulled over face, hands in dressing gown pockets. It’s pure surrealism – engaging, mysterious and unnerving – but, as the fur-hatted director (Bryan Moriarty) insists on tweaks, the figure becomes bland and sentimental: head bowed, hand clasped in half-prayer. ‘Good,’ he purrs. ‘There’s our catastrophe. In the bag.’ Kennedy’s artist almost explodes with Fawlty-esque frustration, but keeps on rictus smiling throughout. (Offstage, unseen, catastrophes presumably continue.)
Joyce misses the crux of ‘Rough for Theatre II’. Two office workers labour under dodgy table-lamps, while a third, Croker, stands on a windowsill, apparently about to jump. Here, though beautifully lit by Joshua Pharo, it lacks specificity: it’s just a room, they’re just three men. Joe Eyre and Bryan Moriarty play it portentously, too aware that they’re living a metaphor.
‘Act Without Words I’, though, is the real curate’s egg. A man (Eyre again) grasps for water that’s always out of reach, with scissors – potentially lethal – always to hand. Joyce adds novel elements: Greg Harradine’s jaunty soundtrack nudges Beckett’s mime into contemporary dance, while Charlie Marie Austin’s design makes life look like a platform game (Get water. Repeat.). But it’s written for a purpose-built theatre, where objects drop unexpectedly from the flies. Without that droll set-up, it just doesn’t work.