Endgame

by Samuel Beckett

seen at the Old Vic on 18 February 2020

Richard Jones directs Alan Cummings as Hamm, a wheelchair-bound blind man, Daniel Radcliffe as Clov, his servant who cannot sit down, Karl Johnson as Nagg, his father, and Jane Horrocks as Nell, his mother, the two parents being confined in dustbins, in Beckett's dystopian vision of the human condition near its wits' end.

The first time I saw this play I was 12 or 13, and it was a play reading at a nearby girls' school. The second time, I was 18 and it was produced at my own school. I think it's fair to say that neither production really managed to get beyond the sheer bleakness of the situation to the manic humour running through it. I saw a production at Trinity College, Dublin many years later, and it was a revelation. The most surprising thing was the lyricism of much of the language, which for me was unlocked by the Irish lilt of the actors in Dublin. This was possibly the most important factor missing from the attempts of Australian schoolchildren to grapple with the text.

The Twilight Zone

devised by Anne Washburn from the TV series

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 20 Jauary 2018

Richard Jones directs a cast of ten in a clever adaptation of eight stories from the cult TV series The Twilight Zone (1959-64), with the set designed by Paul Steinberg and the costumes by Nicky Gillibrand. The actors play multiple parts in the stories, which are interwoven rather than being depicted consecutively, giving an added distancing effect to the already uncanny and often disturbing individual stories.

The original series consisted of independent dramas aimed at destabilising comfortable assumptions about the ways of the world, either through the irruption of the paranormal, or through alien invasions or other science-fiction motifs. This play opens with a classic gambit, travellers stranded in a bar due to a snow storm, with rumours of something uncanny, other than the storm, having occurred nearby. The twist is that the bus driver distinctly remembers that he six passengers originally boarded the bus, but there are seven stranded people in the bar - so one of them must be an alien. There follows a predictable series of arguments and defensive ploys as everyone bickers about what could be going on. The denouement is withheld until after several other stories have got underway, but it has a neat twist of its own.

The Trial

by Franz Kafka adapted by Nick Gill

seen at the Young Vic on 12 August 2015

The play is not, of course, by Franz Kafka - it is a rather free adaptation from the famous novel. It is directed by Richard Jones and features Rory Kinnear as Joseph K, with eleven other actors taking all the subsidiary roles, in particular Kate O'Flynn playing some six significant females in Joseph's life, as imagined by Nick Gill.

The first four rows of the audience on either side of a long transverse stage are reached through corridors of flimsy plywood, and each row has an equally makeshift shelf in front of it, rendering everyone sitting there as putative jurors in the eponymous trial. The acting space itself, designed by Miriam Buether, has two parallel belts which are frequently in motion to allow various props and settings to appear and disappear as required. Scenes are often framed by doors at either end, which are free-standing and are often slammed loudly. The effect is nightmarish, especially as it gives rise to the thought that all significant spaces for Joseph K are essentially alike in their configuration. The phrase 'everything belongs to the Court' begins to have a physical as well as a metaphorical resonance.