No that's not Our Lady of Dalkey although he might enjoy that.
January is proving an embarrassment of riches. Not Eddie Izzard's riches. That's not embarrassing at all. I loved The Riches and wish it would come back. No, there is just so much Irish Theatre that I have now to make choices. See one play. Forgo another.
I've had to opt for The Crumb Trail over Samuel Beckett's First Love at the Public Theatre, part of the Under the Radar Festival. Both are closing this week-end. I would have liked to have seen First Love: the review has it as funny! How I yearn to see that alluded to yet elusive humor in Beckett. However it's been there, done that with this particular Beckett one-act. It was part of the Gate/Beckett Marathon last summer with Mr. Ralph Fiennes. Earnest and important, but not too much humor in Mr. Fiennes' performance. The 2009 (so far) First Love's NYT review can be found at the end of this post.
In the meantime, Our Lady of Dalkey, Sinead Cusack, is bridge and tunneling it in BAM's heady theatrical showcase: The Cherry Orchard. Adapted by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Sam Mendes. Swoon.
I've had to opt for The Crumb Trail over Samuel Beckett's First Love at the Public Theatre, part of the Under the Radar Festival. Both are closing this week-end. I would have liked to have seen First Love: the review has it as funny! How I yearn to see that alluded to yet elusive humor in Beckett. However it's been there, done that with this particular Beckett one-act. It was part of the Gate/Beckett Marathon last summer with Mr. Ralph Fiennes. Earnest and important, but not too much humor in Mr. Fiennes' performance. The 2009 (so far) First Love's NYT review can be found at the end of this post.
In the meantime, Our Lady of Dalkey, Sinead Cusack, is bridge and tunneling it in BAM's heady theatrical showcase: The Cherry Orchard. Adapted by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Sam Mendes. Swoon.
Info here
FIRST LOVE
Public Theater
Through Sunday
Every year actors try to convince audiences that Samuel Beckett, despite his gloomy reputation, is actually a hilarious guy — and it almost never works. Fiona Shaw came close in her brilliant performance in “Happy Days” last year, and Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, who are starring in a coming Broadway production of “Waiting for Godot,” will surely make their case. What usually happens is that the talented performers do a better job proving their own comic chops riffing on the script, adding physical humor and verbal accents.
Conor Lovett’s supremely funny performance in “First Love,” a solo stage adaptation of an early postwar Beckett novella, is such a pleasing triumph because its gallows humor emerges so organically, the result of a prepared actor with a deep understanding of the text.
To be sure, this muscularly written tale (presented by the Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland) in which the narrator impregnates a prostitute and abandons the child may not sound like the plot of a comedy, especially since the narrator, a misanthrope who prefers his own company to that of anyone else, has been expelled from his home after the death of his father. Scatological, vulgar and occasionally shocking, the levity here is of the “laughing wild amid severest woe” variety. Call it a love story for loners.
Mr. Lovett begins with a firm belief that there is a laugh (or a tear) in almost every other sentence. And with the able help of his wife and director, Judy Hegarty Lovett, the interpretation of the precisely formed language has the rhythm of a Bob Newhart routine. A shrugging Irish actor with floppy ears, Mr. Lovett begins quickly with aggressive, attention-getting force, discussing the virtues of a graveyard.
“The smell of corpses,” he says, as if he were a singer belting out a note before gradually reducing the volume, “distinctly perceptible under those of grass and humus mingled. I do not find it unpleasant, a trifle on the sweet side perhaps, a trifle heady, but how infinitely preferable to what,” he stops abruptly, his stammer working like a setup to the punch line: “the living emit.”
But even worse than the smelly living is the cry of his child, loudly echoing in his ears no matter how hard he tries to forget it. It’s a credit to the commanding actor that you feel for this haunted misanthrope without his sinking into sentimentality. “I could have done with other loves perhaps,” Mr. Lovett says at the end with no remorse. “But there it is, either you love or you don’t.” JASON ZINOMAN
Public Theater
Through Sunday
Every year actors try to convince audiences that Samuel Beckett, despite his gloomy reputation, is actually a hilarious guy — and it almost never works. Fiona Shaw came close in her brilliant performance in “Happy Days” last year, and Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, who are starring in a coming Broadway production of “Waiting for Godot,” will surely make their case. What usually happens is that the talented performers do a better job proving their own comic chops riffing on the script, adding physical humor and verbal accents.
Conor Lovett’s supremely funny performance in “First Love,” a solo stage adaptation of an early postwar Beckett novella, is such a pleasing triumph because its gallows humor emerges so organically, the result of a prepared actor with a deep understanding of the text.
To be sure, this muscularly written tale (presented by the Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland) in which the narrator impregnates a prostitute and abandons the child may not sound like the plot of a comedy, especially since the narrator, a misanthrope who prefers his own company to that of anyone else, has been expelled from his home after the death of his father. Scatological, vulgar and occasionally shocking, the levity here is of the “laughing wild amid severest woe” variety. Call it a love story for loners.
Mr. Lovett begins with a firm belief that there is a laugh (or a tear) in almost every other sentence. And with the able help of his wife and director, Judy Hegarty Lovett, the interpretation of the precisely formed language has the rhythm of a Bob Newhart routine. A shrugging Irish actor with floppy ears, Mr. Lovett begins quickly with aggressive, attention-getting force, discussing the virtues of a graveyard.
“The smell of corpses,” he says, as if he were a singer belting out a note before gradually reducing the volume, “distinctly perceptible under those of grass and humus mingled. I do not find it unpleasant, a trifle on the sweet side perhaps, a trifle heady, but how infinitely preferable to what,” he stops abruptly, his stammer working like a setup to the punch line: “the living emit.”
But even worse than the smelly living is the cry of his child, loudly echoing in his ears no matter how hard he tries to forget it. It’s a credit to the commanding actor that you feel for this haunted misanthrope without his sinking into sentimentality. “I could have done with other loves perhaps,” Mr. Lovett says at the end with no remorse. “But there it is, either you love or you don’t.” JASON ZINOMAN
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