Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
4 stars
A man steps out from the audience and onto a stage that remains bare
other than a stool that sits in the far corner while a solitary shaft
of light brightens the stage's centre. As the reflective piano music
that's been playing fades out, the man, dressed in buttoned-up charity
shop suit and a hoodie underneath, proceeds to tell his story. Or
rather, in the Cork-based Gare St Lazare Players latest rendering of
Samuel Beckett's prose, one of many stories. Because there's a real
sense of continuum in the company's approach that becomes increasingly
clear with their every visit.
Much of this down to the solo performances by Conor Lovett as directed
by Judy Hegarty Lovett in a spare and austere fashion. Both suggest
that what's being said is just the latest episode in a life of incident
and colour. Here, Lovett takes a novella penned by Beckett in 1948 but
not published until 1971 and lifts it off the page with a dry sense of
understatement that would give that other great Irish comic orator Dave
Allen a run for his money.
Over eighty minutes, Lovett explains, or rather, confesses how a visit
to his father's grave and an interrupted night's sleep on a park bench
results in his moving into a two-room flat with a prostitute. As he
recounts every awkward intimacy while acting out the niceties of
courtship by rote, Lovett captures the real essence of flying blind
into a partnership that's as dysfunctional but as necessary as any of
Beckett's other co-dependents. When Lovett's narrator eventually walks
away, his parting line may be full of loss, but there's hope too behind
every word.
The Herald, May 28th 2013
ends
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