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One of theater’s greatest performances: Jack MacGowran in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Beginning to End’
02.21.2011
05:34 pm
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Jack MacGowran was a frail-looking, bird-like man, whose frame belied his power and talent as an actor. You’ll recognize him from The Excorcist, where he played alcoholic director Burke Dennings, or perhaps from Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac, or as Professor Abronsius, in The Fearless Vampire Killers.

If Billie Whitelaw was Samuel Beckett’s favorite actress, then MacGowran was his favored actor. The pair met in the bar of a shabby London hotel, an unlikely start to an “intimate alliance” that saw MacGowran collaborate with Beckett on the definitive versions of Waiting for Godot and Endgame. From this, their partnership led to a further legendary collaboration Beginning to End. As Jordan R. Young noted in his book, The Beckett Actor:

...Jack MacGowran in the Works of Samuel Beckett (aka Beginning to End) [is] one of the most highly-acclaimed one-man shows in the history of theatre, [which] changed forever the public perception of Beckett from a purveyor of gloom and despair, to a writer of wit, humanity and courage. It also brought the actor widespread recognition as Beckett’s foremost interpreter. “The first time I saw Jack, in Endgame… I came away haunted by the impression he made on me,” said Paul Scofield. “I have remained so ever since.”

The production was filmed to celebrate Beckett’s sixtieth birthday:

Beginning to End [which] features the peerless Jack MacGowran in his one-man show, devised with Beckett and recorded for RTÉ Television in 1966. “Jack’s stage presence stays with me more than anything,” said Peter O’Toole. “This frail thing with this enormous power. He walked a tightrope as if it were a three-lane highway.” Martin Esslin, in The Theatre of the Absurd, commented on Beckett’s deep affection for MacGowran: “If ever there was a perfect congruence between a great poet’s imagination and an actor, this was it ... Jack MacGowran’s individual quality and life story are an essential ingredient in our understanding of the life and work of one of the outstanding creative minds of our time.”

Rarely seen, and long thought lost, this is a must-see, for it is one of the greatest stage performances ever committed to film.
 

 
Previously on DM

Billie Whitelaw’s stunning performance in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’, 1973


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.21.2011
05:34 pm
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Billie Whitelaw’s stunning performance in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’, 1973
02.20.2011
04:52 pm
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The actress Billie Whitelaw couldn’t imagine what it was like. The theater darkened, apart from a spotlight on Whitelaw’s mouth, as she delivered Samuel Beckett’s babbling stream of consciousness Not I.

It’s one of the most disturbing images in theater: a disembodied mouth, telling its tale “at the speed of thought.” It takes incredible discipline and strength for the actor to perform: the text isn’t easy to learn, its full of difficult instructions, pauses, repetitions and disjointed phrases; add to this the speed of delivery, which means the actor has to learn circular breathing in order to deliver the lines. Jessica Tandy once gave a performance that lasted twenty-four minutes, only to be told by Beckett that she had “ruined” his play. And let’s not forget the rigidity of the piece: the actor’s lack of mobility, the mouth tethered to a spotlight, all of which says everything for Whitelaw’s brilliance as an actor.

Here, Whitelaw introduces Not I in the short documentary, A Wake for Sam, and explains the effect it had on her:

Plenty of writers can write a play about a state of mind, but [Beckett] actually put that state of mind on the stage, in front of your eyes. And I think a lot of people recognized it. I recognized it. When I first read it at home, I just burst in to tears, because I recognized the inner scream. Perhaps that’s not what it is, I don’t know, but for me, that’s what I recognized, an inner scream, in there, and no escaping it.

 

 
Previously on DM

Samuel Beckett speaks


 
With thanks to Tim Lucas
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.20.2011
04:52 pm
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‘Film’: Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett’s avant-garde masterpiece
12.15.2010
06:26 pm
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Film, based on a script by Samuel Beckett, was made in 1965 and stars Buster Keaton. While Alan Schneider gets director’s credit, Beckett made his only trip to America (NYC) to supervise the making of the film and is generally considered to be the film’s actual director or, at the very least, a very present influence on its creation.

Beckett admired Keaton and chose him to play the character of “0.” Keaton, who was old and struggling with alcoholism, agreed to appear in the film despite not caring much for the script. Keaton wasn’t discriminating when it came to money gigs. The fact that Beckett had flown to Los Angeles to woo him was certainly a factor in Buster’s decision to do the movie.  Little did he know at the time, or ultimately care, that he was starring in what is considered by many to be a small masterpiece.

Beckett describes the theme of Film thusly:

Film is about a man trying to escape from perception of all kinds - from all perceivers - even divine perceivers. There is a picture which he pulls down. But he can’t escape from self-perception. It is an idea from Bishop Berkeley, the Irish philosopher and idealist, “To be is to be perceived” - “Esse est percipi.” The man who desires to cease to be must cease to be perceived. If being is being perceived, to cease being is to cease to be perceived.’

According to film scholars Katherine Waugh & Fergus Daly:

Beckett sets his film in the year 1929, the year Un Chien Andalou was made (and of course the first year of the sound film). In addition the film opens and closes with close-ups of a sightless eye which would seem to refer to the notorious opening sequence of Un Chien Andalou in which a human eye is sliced open with a razor blade. In fact ‘Eye’ was Beckett’s original title for Film.

For a detailed and entertaining reflection on the making of Film read this piece by Alan Schneider.

Film is silent. Beckett intended that the script be read live during screenings. Here it is in its entirety.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.15.2010
06:26 pm
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Happy Bloomsday!
06.16.2010
02:45 am
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Today, June 16th, being the day, of course, which marks Leopold Bloom‘s epic meanderings through Dublin in James Joyce‘s modernist masterwork, Ulysses.  While those events occurred a whopping 106 years ago, Bloomsday is a still-celebrated event, complete with pub crawls and public readings of the novel.  And if you’re in New York, or even near a radio:

Bloomsday on Broadway, staged annually at Symphony Space since 1981, has a cabal of actors and writers performing scenes from the novel.  This year’s iteration, which will be simulcast on WNYC radio, and Symphony Space, explores the parallels between “Ulysses” and Homer’s “Odyssey.”  Excerpts from both works will be enacted on Wednesday by a cast that includes Stephen Colbert, Ira Glass, Malachy McCourt, Tony Roberts and David Margulies.  Isaiah Sheffer, artistic director of Symphony Space, will host.

“Joyce was a poet of sound; he wasn’t a visual person,” Mr. Sheffer said.  “It’s meant to be read aloud.  The big discovery is that it’s funny.”  Mr. Colbert, who cites Bloomsday on Broadway as one of the reasons he moved to New York, will play Odysseus.  “Performing ‘Ulysses’ on Bloomsday at Symphony Space is the only way I’ll ever finish the damn book,” Mr. Colbert admitted in an e-mail message.  The seven-hour event will culminate with a two-and-a-half-hour uncensored reading of Molly Bloom’s erotic late-night monologue by the actress Fionnula Flanagan.

Last week, I mentioned the recent passing of film director Joseph Strick.  If, say, you have today only a few hours to devote to Joyce, you can check out Strick’s 1967 film version of Ulysses at—why not?—this Chinese video site.

And while footage of the author himself is as hard to come by as that of his fellow Irishman, Samuel Beckett, what follows below is a short clip of Joyce in Paris.  The anecdote relayed by the narrator is worth the watch itself.  “Deal with him, Hemingway, deal with him!”

 
Stream of Conviviality for Leopold Bloom’s Day

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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06.16.2010
02:45 am
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Samuel Beckett Speaks
10.14.2009
05:41 pm
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Footage of Beckett speaking is incredibly rare, so I was thrilled to stumble across this extended clip from ‘87’s Waiting for Beckett: A Portrait of Samuel Beckett.  In it, the playwright discusses the video production of “What Where.”  Beckett died two years later.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds: Snape Does Beckett

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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10.14.2009
05:41 pm
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