Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh
3 stars
Samuel Beckett’s 1957 one-act play puts its protagonists in a room in which they cut themselves off from a world which may or may not have been destroyed. Blind Hamm and his whipping boy Clov have created their own little republic, where normal rules do not apply, and Hamm’s parents Nagg and Nell occasionally come up for in the dustbins they call home. The trouble is, like any walled off terrain, once you’ve lost touch with civilisation, any dysfunctions only become polarised.
This may go some way to explain why Robert Rae’s over-egged production tries so desperately to make strange what is already explicit in the text. The over-size birdcage Nabil Shaban’s Hamm has set himself up in contains a mess of incongruous detritus that looks like a job lot from Steptoe’s junk-yard. Garry Robson’s Clov wheels himself around this with the patience of a saint. If Raymond Short’s Nagg is as deadpan as Ivor Cutler, Dolina Maclennan’s Nell is more Jimmy Krankie. How anyone got here and learnt to live like this is only implied by self-conscious rituals that suggest something more complex than that of master and servant.
The kinetic sculptures designed by Sharmanka, the creative team of Eduard Bersudsky and Tatyana Jakovslavska, may be beautiful works of art in themselves, but here look inappropriately shoe-horned into a play perfectly capable of speaking for itself. Which, in Robson’s quietly understated, unforced and utterly natural delivery, honours Beckett in a way the rest of the production fails to grasp. As Clov attempts to get out while he still can, no matter how much he may fail it’s a lesson to us all.
The Herald, November 5th 2007
ends
3 stars
Samuel Beckett’s 1957 one-act play puts its protagonists in a room in which they cut themselves off from a world which may or may not have been destroyed. Blind Hamm and his whipping boy Clov have created their own little republic, where normal rules do not apply, and Hamm’s parents Nagg and Nell occasionally come up for in the dustbins they call home. The trouble is, like any walled off terrain, once you’ve lost touch with civilisation, any dysfunctions only become polarised.
This may go some way to explain why Robert Rae’s over-egged production tries so desperately to make strange what is already explicit in the text. The over-size birdcage Nabil Shaban’s Hamm has set himself up in contains a mess of incongruous detritus that looks like a job lot from Steptoe’s junk-yard. Garry Robson’s Clov wheels himself around this with the patience of a saint. If Raymond Short’s Nagg is as deadpan as Ivor Cutler, Dolina Maclennan’s Nell is more Jimmy Krankie. How anyone got here and learnt to live like this is only implied by self-conscious rituals that suggest something more complex than that of master and servant.
The kinetic sculptures designed by Sharmanka, the creative team of Eduard Bersudsky and Tatyana Jakovslavska, may be beautiful works of art in themselves, but here look inappropriately shoe-horned into a play perfectly capable of speaking for itself. Which, in Robson’s quietly understated, unforced and utterly natural delivery, honours Beckett in a way the rest of the production fails to grasp. As Clov attempts to get out while he still can, no matter how much he may fail it’s a lesson to us all.
The Herald, November 5th 2007
ends
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