Word: beckett
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...walk and a hit batsman put runners on first and second with nobody out, and when Tom Bergantino could not handle Fred Beckett's grounder to third, the bases were loaded. John Quinlan and Mike Dvorchak slapped out a pair of singles scoring three runs and sending Emmet to the showers with the score 5 to 4 and the tying and tie-breaking runs on base...
This is especially regrettable in the case of Beckett's All That Fall. Since his Waiting for Godot, it is hard not to look at every succeeding lesser play as a lost opportunity for another masterpiece. Not that the new play is a total loss: many lines in it bear the authentic whiplash-imprint of Beckett's scathing wit or glow darkly with the grim beauty that only he commands...
...mood of the play is Beckett's familiar ravaging despair. Perhaps its climax occurs when the old woman quotes the Bible: "The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all that be bowed down"--and then bursts into wild laughter. The manner, on the other hand, is a new one for Mr. Beckett. All That Fall is set, not in the middle of nowhere, but quite recognizably in the Irish countryside. If you allow his characters the rhetorical skill and the comic eccentricities that everybody does allow the Irish, the play is not far from being realistic...
...fault of the Poets' if none of the three plays is very effective. The directors (Mary Manning for Beckett's, William Driver for Campton's) have not much opportunity to he helpful, since no movement at all is really necessary. But their efforts at staging are intelligently modest, and it must be credited to them that the performances are almost uniformly good. DeFrench and Greely Curtis are convincingly miserable in All That Fall, and William Driver and Hope Christopoulos do right by Cockney accents in A Smell of Burning. Stanley Jay gives the best performance of the evening in Momento...
...only the plays had a bit more meat on them, the evening at the Poets' might be more intriguing. As it is, the loyal circle of Beckett admirers will be interested in seeing for themselves, but there is not much to attract a broader audience than that...