Isolation may be the crux of Samuel Beckett's literary and dramatic canon, yet such is his waggishly profound understanding of the human condition that it connects in a way that mere navel-gazing never could.
So it goes in the Cork-based Gare St Lazare company's latest dissection of Beckett-world, a solo rendition by Conor Lovett of a short story first published in 1955. A monologue from the point of view of a man discharged from some form of institution forced to make his way in the world alone, what starts out as a kind of picaresque rake's progress becomes a slow decline into self-negation, until Lovett literally vanishes.
With only two wooden benches on stage, Lovett may be clad in charcoal suit and tacketty boots, but, as directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett, his is a more understatedly casual approach to Beckett than mere clowning around. Instead, Lovett relates his yarn of seeking refuge in a near roofless, dilapidated shed and the pure private joy of scratching an itch with a sense of intimacy that charms and amuses without ever feeling self-consciously peculiar.
Over 85 delicious minutes, Lovett captures the depth behind every hesitant nuance of Beckett's wordplay as he did in his previous three-hour rendition of his muse's early trilogy of novels. It might be argued too that, in the pre care-in-the-community society Beckett depicts, there is a quietly political point to the story of such a displaced figure.
If so, it never forces the issue, as somehow out of the mire it becomes clear there is a profound difference between being lonely and just being alone in this most solitary of pleasures.
HHHH
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