Latest news with #BeckettBriefs'
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Now streaming, Irish Rep's 'Beckett Briefs,' headlined by F. Murray Abraham, asks the essential questions
In the program for 'Beckett Briefs,' a bill of three short plays by Samuel Beckett at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City, three questions are posed: 'Why these plays?' 'Why now?' And 'Why Beckett?' The concise answers put forth by the production's director, Ciarán O'Reilly, and Irish Rep Artistic Director Charlotte Moore are not my own, but I agree with them when they write that 'there has never been a more consequential time to delve deeper and ask the fundamental questions: The Whys.' On a recent short trip, while deciding what to see, I felt compelled to make room for Beckett in what was an impossible schedule. Yes, I was curious to see Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham in the play I consider Beckett's masterpiece, 'Krapp's Last Tape.' And yes, I find I'm unable to pass up an opportunity of seeing 'Play,' in which three characters — a man, his wife and his mistress — are potted in funeral urns in the hereafter, each retelling their side of a romantic triangle that hardly seems worth the everlasting discord. As for 'Not I,' the briefest of the three pieces, I have been waiting for another chance to experience the spotlighted mouth of a woman talking a mile a minute in fragments that I have yet to be able to piece together. Sarah Street, who heroically performed the work at a hurtling pace, confirmed for me that coherent narrative sense wasn't what Beckett was aiming for. After I arranged tickets, it was announced that the League of Live Stream Theater will be streaming 'Beckett Briefs' from March 16 through March 30. I had thought this bill would be an ideal streaming offering and wished I had known in advance, but I'm glad I got to experience the production in person for reasons that have to do with the 'Why Beckett?' question. Beckett is perennially timely because his works concern themselves with those eternal questions that the political emergencies of the day cannot override. Even as we confront impossible times, we remain planted in that greater impossibility — human existence. But I was craving 'Beckett Briefs' for other reasons. I want to be more mindful of where I place my attention. Our minds are being hijacked by Big Tech, and one of the ironies of our age is that, even as our access to information, entertainment and consumer goods has grown exponentially, our capacity to focus and extend ourselves cognitively has become severely impaired. As an act of personal resistance, I'm tackling James Joyce's 'Ulysses' again. I'll admit it's a struggle. I read a chapter, browse through supporting materials online, and then listen to the chapter in an audio recording on YouTube. Tech isn't all bad. The resources on the internet were not available to me when I read 'Ulysses' for the first time as a student. But back then, I didn't feel the need to read Joyce as a sociological corrective. And I was somewhat more comfortable with the idea of difficulty in art. I wasn't conditioned to expect everything worthwhile to be predigested and readily exploitable. Joyce was, of course, Beckett's mentor, and though he went in the opposite direction of Joyce's maximalism, he shares the same determination to start from scratch with artistic form. In whatever discipline Beckett happened to be working in, he reinvestigated not just the vocabulary but the grammar of that medium. His plays demonstrate a fierce effort to get down to brass tacks. What is the least that is required to reveal the most? Audiences have no choice but to exist in the theatrical moment, without recourse to linear logic, sententious language or psychological epiphanies. 'Krapp's Last Tape' creates a dialogue between an old man and his younger self, through audio diary tapes that reveal what the character was like 30 years earlier — to his everlasting disgust. Krapp eavesdrops, in effect, on his younger literary aspirations and his decision to end the relationship that turned out to be his last chance of love. The play may be Beckett's most personal, the one that brings you closest to the man. In less than an hour, it achieves what took Marcel Proust, another key literary influence, thousands of pages in 'In Search of Lost Time' to convey — that we die not once but myriad times, being a succession of selves, recognizable yet discrete. Abraham, adopting a dignified clown demeanor, has an embodied theatricality that is well suited to Beckett's style. His exuberant acting benefits from the severity of Beckett's concision. I recently showed my students the film of John Hurt's performance in 'Krapp's Last Tape,' which I was lucky enough to see in person at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It remains for me the high-water mark of Beckett acting. But I was grateful to experience the text through a different voice and countenance. It tells you something about Beckett that an actor of Abraham's stature wants to do this play off-Broadway at this time of his career. The cast of 'Play' — Kate Forbes, Street (doing double duty after 'Not I') and Roger Dominic Casey — lends the astringent playfulness a fresh tone in a lucid, deliberate, perhaps a tad overcareful production. The audience at Irish Rep on the Sunday matinee I attended may have been Beckett veterans, but it's vital that a new generation of artists stays in contact with the vision of this pathbreaking playwright. Which brings me to the other reason I had for seeing 'Beckett Briefs' — my complete fatigue with realism. Or should I say my exhaustion with a kind of TV realism that seems to believe the purpose of art is to offer a slice not so much of life but of idiosyncratic behavior. It's not simply that the canvas has shrunk. Beckett worked on a rigorously compact scale. It's that realism has been confused with reality, and I worry that actors and writers are losing sight of the experience of living by zooming in on psychological minutiae. Beckett reminds us of the metaphysical vastness that the stage can contain. Luckily, his style, always so ahead of us, is amenable to the close scrutiny of streaming. Were he alive he would have designed a digital performance that would have made us rethink the possibilities of the form. But it's heartening that more people will be able to experience through "Beckett Briefs" the aesthetic renewal of his example. For streaming tickets to "Beckett Briefs," click here. Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Now streaming, Irish Rep's ‘Beckett Briefs,' headlined by F. Murray Abraham, asks the essential questions
In the program for 'Beckett Briefs,' a bill of three short plays by Samuel Beckett at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City, three questions are posed: 'Why these plays?' 'Why now?' And 'Why Beckett?' The concise answers put forth by the production's director, Ciarán O'Reilly, and Irish Rep Artistic Director Charlotte Moore are not my own, but I agree with them when they write that 'there has never been a more consequential time to delve deeper and ask the fundamental questions: The Whys.' On a recent short trip, while deciding what to see, I felt compelled to make room for Beckett in what was an impossible schedule. Yes, I was curious to see Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham in the play I consider Beckett's masterpiece, 'Krapp's Last Tape.' And yes, I find I'm unable to pass up an opportunity of seeing 'Play,' in which three characters — a man, his wife and his mistress — are potted in funeral urns in the hereafter, each retelling their side of a romantic triangle that hardly seems worth the everlasting discord. As for 'Not I,' the briefest of the three pieces, I have been waiting for another chance to experience the spotlighted mouth of a woman talking a mile a minute in fragments that I have yet to be able to piece together. Sarah Street, who heroically performed the work at a hurtling pace, confirmed for me that coherent narrative sense wasn't what Beckett was aiming for. After I arranged tickets, it was announced that the League of Live Stream Theater will be streaming 'Beckett Briefs' from March 16 through March 30. I had thought this bill would be an ideal streaming offering and wished I had known in advance, but I'm glad I got to experience the production in person for reasons that have to do with the 'Why Beckett?' question. Beckett is perennially timely because his works concern themselves with those eternal questions that the political emergencies of the day cannot override. Even as we confront impossible times, we remain planted in that greater impossibility — human existence. But I was craving 'Beckett Briefs' for other reasons. I want to be more mindful of where I place my attention. Our minds are being hijacked by Big Tech, and one of the ironies of our age is that, even as our access to information, entertainment and consumer goods has grown exponentially, our capacity to focus and extend ourselves cognitively has become severely impaired. As an act of personal resistance, I'm tackling James Joyce's 'Ulysses' again. I'll admit it's a struggle. I read a chapter, browse through supporting materials online, and then listen to the chapter in an audio recording on YouTube. Tech isn't all bad. The resources on the internet were not available to me when I read 'Ulysses' for the first time as a student. But back then, I didn't feel the need to read Joyce as a sociological corrective. And I was somewhat more comfortable with the idea of difficulty in art. I wasn't conditioned to expect everything worthwhile to be predigested and readily exploitable. Joyce was, of course, Beckett's mentor, and though he went in the opposite direction of Joyce's maximalism, he shares the same determination to start from scratch with artistic form. In whatever discipline Beckett happened to be working in, he reinvestigated not just the vocabulary but the grammar of that medium. His plays demonstrate a fierce effort to get down to brass tacks. What is the least that is required to reveal the most? Audiences have no choice but to exist in the theatrical moment, without recourse to linear logic, sententious language or psychological epiphanies. 'Krapp's Last Tape' creates a dialogue between an old man and his younger self, through audio diary tapes that reveal what the character was like 30 years earlier — to his everlasting disgust. Krapp eavesdrops, in effect, on his younger literary aspirations and his decision to end the relationship that turned out to be his last chance of love. The play may be Beckett's most personal, the one that brings you closest to the man. In less than an hour, it achieves what took Marcel Proust, another key literary influence, thousands of pages in 'In Search of Lost Time' to convey — that we die not once but myriad times, being a succession of selves, recognizable yet discrete. Abraham, adopting a dignified clown demeanor, has an embodied theatricality that is well suited to Beckett's style. His exuberant acting benefits from the severity of Beckett's concision. I recently showed my students the film of John Hurt's performance in 'Krapp's Last Tape,' which I was lucky enough to see in person at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It remains for me the high-water mark of Beckett acting. But I was grateful to experience the text through a different voice and countenance. It tells you something about Beckett that an actor of Abraham's stature wants to do this play off-Broadway at this time of his career. The cast of 'Play' — Kate Forbes, Street (doing double duty after 'Not I') and Roger Dominic Casey — lends the astringent playfulness a fresh tone in a lucid, deliberate, perhaps a tad overcareful production. The audience at Irish Rep on the Sunday matinee I attended may have been Beckett veterans, but it's vital that a new generation of artists stays in contact with the vision of this pathbreaking playwright. Which brings me to the other reason I had for seeing 'Beckett Briefs' — my complete fatigue with realism. Or should I say my exhaustion with a kind of TV realism that seems to believe the purpose of art is to offer a slice not so much of life but of idiosyncratic behavior. It's not simply that the canvas has shrunk. Beckett worked on a rigorously compact scale. It's that realism has been confused with reality, and I worry that actors and writers are losing sight of the experience of living by zooming in on psychological minutiae. Beckett reminds us of the metaphysical vastness that the stage can contain. Luckily, his style, always so ahead of us, is amenable to the close scrutiny of streaming. Were he alive he would have designed a digital performance that would have made us rethink the possibilities of the form. But it's heartening that more people will be able to experience through 'Beckett Briefs' the aesthetic renewal of his example. For streaming tickets to 'Beckett Briefs,' click here.
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Explore the Met Museum With Gavin Creel and More Theater to Stream Now
'Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice' When Gavin Creel died of a rare form of cancer last fall, at the age of 48, he left behind an artistic and emotional hole — he was a beloved presence onstage, especially in musical theater, with an easy wit, a sure flair for physical comedy and an old-fashioned elegance. One of his last large-scale endeavors was the musical 'Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice,' for which he wrote the book and score, and which he performed in a run at MCC Theater in 2023. The show, which The New York Times's Michael Paulson described as 'a passion project' in his obituary for Creel, allowed the actor to venture into soul-searching as he explored his (very new) relationship with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fortunately, that institution, which had commissioned the project, keeps a capture of an October 2021 performance on YouTube. '[Untitled Miniature]' As a theater maker, Joshua William Gelb fully came into his own with his Theater in Quarantine productions, which he performed and streamed live from a closet in his home, often displaying uncommon technical mastery. From Tuesday through March 25, he continues to explore the live-digital hybrid with a new project that sounds closer to the experiments of such artists as Marina Abramovic than to traditional theater, and in which he will push the boundaries of his own endurance. In '[Untitled Miniature],' Gelb will spend 24 nonconsecutive hours (in 45-minute segments spread over eight days) naked inside a box that's about 3 feet wide by less than 2 feet tall. Despite (or perhaps because of) the limited space, his movement will be choreographed. Audience members can buy tickets for either the physical performances, to be held at HERE, or for a live feed. 'Beckett Briefs' Irish Repertory Theater has been among the most proactive New York companies when it comes to making its productions available online. Right after its omnibus 'Beckett Briefs' closes its live run, it will be available on demand for an extra couple of weeks, from Sunday through March 30; the cost is $39 (Irish Rep members get 20 percent off). Directed by Ciaran O'Reilly, the 75-minute show is made up of three relatively short pieces — 'Not I,' 'Play' and 'Krapp's Last Tape' — which are 'about mortality and memory,' as Laura Collins-Hughes wrote in The New York Times. The last, in particular, stars 'an understatedly masterful F. Murray Abraham.' We can only wish more companies would follow Irish Rep's example in making parts of a run available online. 'Who Am I This Time?' As 'A Streetcar Named Desire' pays one of its regular visits to the New York stages (this time starring Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), now is a good time to check out this film that the director Jonathan Demme made for public television's American Playhouse in 1982. Christopher Walken plays Harry, a hardware store clerk so shy that he's barely verbal. Put him onstage, though, and he comes to charismatic life — he needs to play a role to fully express himself. When new-to-town Helene (Susan Sarandon) is cast as Stella opposite Harry's Stanley in an amateur company's production of 'Streetcar,' sparks fly. But what happens when they need to interact outside, or when they play other roles? Based on a story by Kurt Vonnegut, 'Who Am I This Time?' is a lovely miniature that is very perceptive about the transformative power of acting. Walken and Sarandon are surprisingly simpatico as two loners who blossom onstage, and as a bonus the Velvet Underground's John Cale wrote the original score. 'Grounded' On March 21 at 9 p.m., the long-running PBS series Great Performances premieres the Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori ('Fun Home,' 'Kimberly Akimbo') and the librettist George Brant's 'Grounded,' which was captured at the Metropolitan Opera. Based on Brant's own play of the same name, the opera follows the emotional and psychological travails of Jess, a former fighter-jet pilot who now wages war at a distance by operating a drone. Although the one-woman original (an Off Broadway production in 2015 starred Anne Hathaway) has been beefed up to feature more characters, Jess remains its center and the weight of the show falls on Emily D'Angelo's shoulders — happily, she is up to the task. In his review for The New York Times, Zachary Woolfe praised her as 'the best thing about 'Grounded,'' and also noted the 'melted-gold tenor and easygoing charm' of Ben Bliss as Jess's husband. Another Broadway regular, Michael Mayer (most recently behind 'Swept Away'), handles the staging, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts.
