PLAY and NOT I. To 7 August.

London

PLAY and NOT I
by Samuel Beckett

bac (Studio 1) To 7 August 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 5.30pm
Runs 45min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7223 2223
www.bac.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden

Brilliantly-conceived production of two short yet demanding pieces.Beckett's mischievously-titled Play is a cruel piece. Its account of an infidelity, with the man either central, or trapped between, the women he's involved with, is performed by mud-encrusted actors, faces peering from 3 urns. The Man might at least apologise- and he does but only for the hiccups that intersperse his speech.

Words come with inflection-defying rapidity (the script's played through twice) in fragments, switching between the 3 as a tight beam of light plays on each face, voices stopping the instant it snaps off to someone else. Playing it demands absolute word-certainty and intense concentration the formula allows no stumble or pause for thought-gathering, while the physical conditions deny most physical means of expression (only the eyes have it).

Yet it's devastating here; three plum middle-class voices recounting the emotions provoked by the sexual games people play, the dead speaking out about a life that's ended, the speedy delivery confining emotion in the author's own game with performers and audience.

It's demanding too in its split-second lighting cues. Let alone on the person who has to marshal all this, and understand the detail in order to pack it within Beckett's formula. The annual bac Award production in memory of director James Menzies-Kitchin (who died in 1996 aged 28) is richly deserved by Natalie Abrahami, whose production takes place in a seat-less studio, audiences siting on the tiered floor, a less-than-comfortable place to watch this purgatory-on-earth being replayed in near total darkness, with absolute understanding.

Then the light beam plays off, leaving the dead in silence, to find on high the mouth that's all we see in Not I, a Beckett piece about a silence that's discovered its voice midlife and now gabbles on with shock and alienation. Lisa Dwan gabbles with conviction, if not finding the controlled variety that Billy Whitelaw brought to the 1973 premiere or which Pauline Goldsmith found at Glasgow's Arches in their 2003 revival.

Overall, though, this show inventively links two famous Beckett images, showing an age strong on physical theatre how vividly he focused human drama in a single, strong stage-picture.

Play
W1: Amanda Drew
W2: Anna Hewson
M: John Hopkins

Not I:
Mouth: Lisa Dwan

Director: Natalie Abrahami

Designer: Colin Richmond
Lighting: KatharineWilliams

2005-07-25 11:04:02