Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Five stars
When a half buried Winnie asks a barely visible Willie if he still finds her loveable mid way through the first act of Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic study of still lives, it as if they are on a second honeymoon. As Winnie attempts in vain to rekindle lost passions that long gave way to the daily torpor of their routines, Willie can only hide behind a newspaper to barricade himself from her incessant chatter. In her attempts to find some kind of spark, Winnie’s free associating babble flits between everyday mundanities and half remembered moments that defined the way things once were. Unable to spell out her inner yearning, she is literally being buried alive, swamped by the sands of time as the pair go on living apart together.
Siobhán Redmond captures the full brittleness of Winnie’s desperation as she
comes to life on designer Emma Bailey’s sand hill set in Roxana Silbert’s pitch perfect production. All dressed up in blue eye shadow to match her Sunday best frock topped off with black plumage atop her head, there is something cartoonish about Winnie. This is the case too with Willie, played by Forbes Masson with a handkerchief on his head to protect him from the sun and a succession of grunts to fill the void. It is as if they are an end of the pier music hall double act that stepped out of a postcard and arrived out of season with a long past its sell by date routine.
Like a flipside to Beckett’s previous play, Krapp’s Last Tape, there is something desperately sad at play here. Only the surface gallows humour punctuates Winnie’s state of ennui, just as the hole in Bailey’s backdrop lets in some heavenly light.
With Winnie up to her neck in it in the second act, Willie’s last gasp grab at relighting their fire is too little, too late. Suited and booted like an escapee from a Jack Vettriano painting, the spirit may be willing, but the body is pathetically weak. If this is the hill Willie and Winnie die on, it will be blown away soon enough in a life and death masterpiece that transcends the ages.
The Herald, September 25th 2026
Ends
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