Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Bill Irwin gives a masterful lecture ON BECKETT, from a clown’s perspective

• By drediman
• October 4, 2018
• No Comments

Bill Irwin in “On Beckett” at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Samuel Beckett is one of the seminal theater and literary artists of the 20th-Century. He’s also one of the most difficult to get right in performance. That’s because Beckett’s works are at once incredibly prescriptive (in particular, his extremely detailed stage directions) and frustratingly opaque (for example, the proliferation of pronouns in reference to a single person in some of his writings). The masterful actor Bill Irwin understands this juxtaposition and has come up with an essentially one man show that explores and wrestles with the challenges posed by this great writer of the existentialist mindset – from the perspective, of course, of a clown.

If the whole thing feels just a tad too much like a straightforward college lecture, so be it. In the hands of Mr. Irwin, one of the supreme physical actors and clowns of his generation, Beckett’s texts are as wonderfully entertaining as they are penetratingly bleak. Because really, what other cause can there be for a clown’s intense, outward buffoonery than some sort of internal existential crisis? Most of the material is culled from just two works, the iconic play Waiting for Godot and Texts for Nothing. I found this focused approach to actually be one of the show’s masterstrokes. This light/slight but focused approach – as opposed to one that’s panoramic yet prodding – allows for considerable texture and humanity to permeate Beckett’s words. It also gives the brilliant Mr. Irwin just the right platform to convey to us the tools to accessibly begin to unlock and comprehend this most mysterious and fascinatingly idiosyncratic of artists.

RECOMMENDED

ON BECKETT
Off-Broadway, Play
Irish Repertory Theatre
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through November 4