by Richard Connema | Published in SFGate Web site, summer of '01
The American Conservatory Theatre completes their 2000-01 season with America's favorite clown, Bill Irwin, in Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing. The one man, 70 minute show is based on 4 of the 13 prose works that Mr. Beckett wrote in 1950. The production played at the Classic Theatre in New York last year to great reviews.
This play about nothing is not for everyone. It is not the standard play meant to entertain. It is a thinking man's play. It's is also a play about everything. You either love or hate Beckett. Throughout the play there are contradictions of terms. The first prose work is about the childhood recollection of a boy clinging to his father. The second discords life beginning and end where in Mr. Irwin says, "I'm dead and getting born". The third reduces the actor to a pulsing physical body and the last to a prattling mouth.
Texts for Nothing is a layer of text on top of text about texts. Mr. Irwin has created a new Beckett performance piece that could very well find a permanent place in theatrical history. The actor masterfully shapes form and pattern from a rich elegance of prose and phrases.
At the beginning of the play Mr. Irwin comes out in bowler hat, baggy pants, collarless shirt and a tightly fitted jacket looking like Charlie Chaplin. He is a man who has lost all of his belongings. He says nothing. On the stage to the right is a large mound of a hill raising 20 feet from the stage. It is an amazing set. He attempts to climb the mountain. He flaps and slides helplessly down the mountain on a stream of dirt and pebbles. He feels his way around the pools and ravines, splashing and booting and marching, trying to scale the heights a second time. Once again, with no success. He tries to gather the energy to try again but it is no use. Lying at the bottom of the hill he feels a gradual hopeless creeping over him. There is a vigorous finality in his surrender. The person finally speaks to the audience "Suddenly, at long last, I couldn't any more. I couldn't go on. Someone said "You can't stay here". I couldn't stay there and I couldn't go on". Beckett phrases go on like this throughout the whole performance. There is a futility in continuously colliding with the necessary of continuing. Such are the contradictions in Beckett's world.
Bill Irwin's delivery of Beckett's words is bold, using fearless rhythms and signaling gestures down to infinitesimal facial tics and tiny sighs. He inculcates each wonderful avalanche of words and phrases with its own cadence. He accents the wrong words in a sentence and paces the phrases in a disturbing, special way as he emphasizes certain points with a strange face, as if he were at odds with the meaning of the sentence. This was an amazing performance by an amazing actor.
I think Beckett describes the narrator best with this line "a murmur flowing like a single endless word. Through that conscious piece between life and death." As the actor says to the audience toward the end of the production, "I wanted a story of myself where life alone was enough, but my past has thrown me out." Just to see the mesmerizing performance of America's greatest clown is worth the price of admission.
The production runs through July 15 at the Geary Theatre. Tickets are $15 to $61. Call (415)749-2228 or visit www.act-sfbay.org. A return engagement of "Fool Moon" starring Bill Irwin and David Shiner comes to the Geary from July 22 to August 12.Tickets are now on sale at the above number.
Contents produced by JSM | Ed: December 10, 2001