Word: beckett
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...MOON over the Mather House courtyard would delight Samuel Beckett as it dodges behind thick black clouds during this outdoor production of his existentialist tour-de-force, Waiting For Godot. By play's end, it nestles out of sight, casting an appropriate bleakness over a wet and shivering audience. The sky matches Beckett's play in its inability to illumine. The stage slipped between Mather House's cement blocks stands bare of even the smallest of miracles. No leaves flutter on the lone tree that cowers behind a tiny desert. A flute echoes as the only sign of regeneration when...
...production of his bestknown work, which lacks meaning and plot, though the staging has its merits. Cornuelle's ingenuity shines through her apocalyptic set, an outdoor sandcastle lit by torches. It's clearly not the kind of sandcastle on which uplifting dreams are built. Since only futility wafts through Beckett's dreams and illusions, this purgatorial anti-Eden perfectly suits Vladimir and Estragon, the two main characters, who wander helplessly in search of the mysterious Godot...
Though Cornuelle and her cast understand the desolation that underlies Beckett's play, they shun many of the more light-hearted elements of this tragicomedy. Beckett's world consists of both circus clowns and downtrodden poets. The director doesn't give her performers enough guidance in the "baggy pants" aspect of Godot, leaving them to contemplate somberly the meaninglessness of their lives...
McCue and Redford are not the only characters to don headgear. But neither Jeff Horwitz as Pozzo, a representative of the society that Beckett challenges, nor Lisa Claudy, as Pozzo's servant Lucky who responds to his master's every call, can remove their hats with the same aplomb. They lack Redford and McCue's dramatic dexterity. Horwitz seems content to outshout the rest of the actors, sounding more vaudevilian than dramatic. Claudy is not up to Beckett's extremely demanding monologue that satirizes Joyce, and sounds uncomfortable with the speed with which she must utter Lucky's stream...
These ideas are not meant to be taken altogether seriously; Leib's artistry in creating a fine one-act play, and the softpedalled wryness of the pretentious program notes (including quotes from Kafka, Steiner, and Beckett, as well as Wittgenstein) only enhance the subtlety of what amounts to an elaborate parody of an absurdist drama. This is not to say that Leib does not believe in an absurdist view of the universe--he clearly does. He just doesn't believe in writing a play about it. His focus is not on the ideas themselves, which are, as Terry should...