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A CurtainUp Review
All That Fall
By Elyse Sommer
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"Never thought about radio play technique but in the dead of t'other night got a nice gruesome idea full of cartwheels and dragging of feet and puffing and panting which may or may not lead to something.".— from a letter by Samuel Beckett to a friend.
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Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon
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The restrictions on how to present this Irish as Irish can be little tragi-comedy have made it more of a rarity than other Beckett works. However, the distinguished director Trevor Nunn has given new meaning to the old axiom about there being more ways than one to skin a cat. He must have used all his prestige and powers of persuasion for the notoriously strict Beckett estate keepers to give a go-ahead to his stretching the rules about format, action and props just enough to let him mount a production with the feel of a "regular" play.
To support his "case" for being true to Beckett's intent, the actors playing he has kept the actors playing the 10 characters speak only with script in hand, even when they have only a few lines. He still establishes the bucolic setting there are all manner of sound effects, per Beckett's script directions. He has radio mikes for each speaker dangle from the ceiling but since they don't work, they're really props to evoke a sense of a play being recorded in front of a live audience (which was not unusual in the heyday of broadcast plays). The biggest rule stretch is a single contraption to serve as a car to give more visual context to one of the play's funniest scenes.
Though a careful reading of the published text reveals this play to be fun and funny but also quite Beckettian, the success of this production is not so much a case of a rediscovered Beckett gem as the power of star casting. To give his vivified radio play not just stage legs but star power, Nunn cast Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon as the main characters. The two starry thespians (both, like Nunan, knighted), play Mrs. Rooney, the arthritic self-described "big fat jelly" and her husband who's blind and crotchety but but still taking the railroad daily to an office job.
Seeing Atkins and Gambon up close in London's 70-seat Jermyn Theatre was irresistible. The limited run sold out and transferred to a 300-seat house in the West End. And it's now landed in New York's popular 59E59 Theater complex with all but two of the original cast and the design team in place. Though off rather than on Broadway, the prestigious theatrical duo are again creating lots of ticket selling buzz. Ratcheting up this buzz is the timing, since Beckett famous Waiting for Godot, with another pair of illustrious Brits, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, also currently in New York doing Beckett's most famous play, Waiting for Godot in rep with Pinter's No Man's Land.
Actually, All Fall Down is not without Godot's obscure, open to audience interpretation darkness even thought it's Beckett in an unusually accessible mode. The setting is quite specifically that of an Irish farming community. Bawdy comedy dominates more than half the 75 minutes, especially so in this more than usually theatricalized presentation. But beneath Mrs. Rooney's comic encounters with other villagers on her way to the railroad station to walk her blind husband home when he arrives at the station from his office job lurks the shadow of death. In one way or other, the title applies to everything and everyone, giving this simple village tale a Godot-like puzzling complexity that shifts Mrs. Rooney's surprise treat for her husband into a contemplative, eerie who-dunnit.
The staging is the same as in the London production reviewed for Curtainup by Lizzie Loveridge ( the review ). The characters are in costume and sit at the sides of the stage throughout the 75-minutes, ready to take their parts, and when they speak, with scripts in hand. The action begins with Paul Groothuis's scene setting bucolic sound effects. Then Eileen Atkins, rises to begin her expedition across the muddy landscape where everyone knows everyone else's business. In keeping with the loosening of the reins on any stage business, Atkins doesn't just speak her lines but gradually moves across the stage to visually support her being on a journey. Her interaction with various villagers, all of whom give strong support, begins with Christie (Ruairi Conaghan) a carter. Mrs. Rooney's musings and conversations reveal the tragedy of losing her only child who had she lived would now "be girding up her loins, ready for the change."
The most visually enhanced and full of hilarious double entrendres scene comes when Atkins's Mrs. Rooney meets Mr. Slocum (Trevor Cooper, the only new cast member besides young Liam Thrift's Jerry). He's the clerk of the racecourse who offers to give her a ride in his car. This gets him literally stuck in the mud as he tries to lift and wedge the supposedly very obese Mrs Rooney into the cab of his vehicle. Since you see as well as hear the grunts and groans this involves, it's clear that radio listeners would not have been aware that the slim Eileen Atkins is hardly "a big, pale blur."
At first this seems to be mostly Atkins' show, and she's certainly wonderfully compelling. But when the mysteriously delayed train finally brings Gambon on stage, All That Fall indeed becomes a two-star triumph. A seasoned Beckettian (Krapp's Last Tape, Eh Joe, Endgame) his Mr. Rooney is mesmerizingly blustery and poignant.
Mr. Nunn's staging certainly makes All That Fall not just a listening experience, but entertainingly watchable. That said, it's more minor than major Beckett and this presentation does have a somewhat troublesome neither fish nor fowl quality. But no matter. A chance to see Atkins and Gambon live on a stage is an event I wouldn't have missed for anything — and neither should you.
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All That Fall
Written by Samuel Beckett Directed by Trevor Nunn Cast: Eileen Atkins (Mrs. Rooney), Michael Gambon (Mr. Rooney), and in order of appearance- Ruari Conaghan (Christy), Frank Grimes (Mr. Tyler), Trevor Cooper (Mr. Slocum), Billy Carter (Tommy), Catherine Cusack (Miss Fitt), Liam Thrift (Jerry), Jess Regan (Voice Over) Designed by Cherry Truluck Lighting: Phil Hewitt Sound: Paul Groothuis Stage Manager: Jess Johnston Running time: One hour 15 minutes without an intermission 59E 59 Theaters From 11/05/13; opening 11/12/13; closing 12/08/13 Tues-Thurs 7pm; Fri-Saturday 2pm; Sun at 3pm Reviewed by Elyse Sommer at November 8, 2013 press preview |
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