We have to be very brave to talk of death, or more truthfully, of what precedes death. This is a thread that runs through much of Beckett’s work, an extended coda to the Buddhist saying ‘if I do not contemplate death in the morning, I waste the morning. If I do not contemplate death in the afternoon, I waste the afternoon. If I do not contemplate death in the evening, I waste the day.’
A play for an actor and a voice, ‘Eh Joe’ looks hard on loss and perhaps even more so on our inability to change the past or mend ourselves.
Michael Gambon paces the stage, closing curtains, locking himself in for the night, preparing for his solitary bed, but finding he is not alone, for Penelope Wilton’s voice remains with him, urging Gambon’s character to recall the tragedies and disasters of a self-centred and selfish life.
In Atom Egoyan’s stage version of Beckett’s first play for television, close-ups of Gambon’s face react to Wilton’s speech, responding subtly to her combination of satiric mockery and accusation.
The use of close-ups which occupy half the space of the Lyceum proscenium reminded this reviewer of the reactions of the funeral director and poet Thomas Lynch, waking to another day of dealing with the dead, confronting the signs of momento mori in himself.
Beckett knew that death is all around us, but we prefer not to acknowledge that presence. Yet if we do not, he suggests, we waste precious time.
Up close and personal with Gambon’s character and inner voice, there is no place to hide or escape. Like Lynch before his bathroom mirror, we come upon harsh truths.
Yet, as with much of Beckett’s work, we discover that we have always known these things, but have chosen to hide from them. In ‘Eh Joe’ as elsewhere, Beckett brings us back to a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Show times
29 August, 7pm
31 August, 5pm