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.
