Splendid isolation... Beckett Triple Bill, Jermyn Street Theatre

Ah, it was a grand evening to be called Joyce in the Jermyn Street Theatre as Trevor Nunn presented three short plays by Samuel Beckett, an Irishman who often wrote in French but always thought in Irish, with an Irish cast plus one Mancunian.

The staging of these three quite distinct but thematically linked plays was stark and brave making the most of the JST’s intimacy whilst still somehow leaving the players so isolated. In Krapp’s Last Tape, Krapp (James Hayes) is lit by a single overhead light as he huddles over his reel to reel; the darkness makes him feel less alone, he says, yet it serves to accentuate his isolation and a course he has chosen if not exactly welcomed.

In Eh Joe, the titular character (Niall Buggy) is filmed by a video camera which is simultaneously projecting the recording onto the wall behind. It’s very powerful as the actor’s wordless performance is magnified as he listens to imagined the voice of an old lover (a chilling vocal performance from Lisa Dwan who I’m sure left shards of broken glass on the floor of the recording booth…) slowly break him down into tears.

Niall Buggy (Joe). Photo Robert Workman

The press night was packed and the run is nearly sold out already and it’s not hard to see why; this was a masterclass of acting and directing in the kind of space the minimalist Beckett would have loved for his one and two-handed plays. All three plays deal with memory from the point of view of men nearing the end of their lives; there’s intense loneliness, palpable regret and bitterness but also humour; these situations are funny no matter how dark they seem.

In Krapp’s Last Tape, a 69-year old man listens back to recordings he made at 39 when he had seemingly found his motivation for writing whilst at the same time losing out in a relationship that could have gone on a lot longer. He tells himself he does not regret the passing of his youth in the tape and in the present day says the same thing even as he winces at his own vocalisation of creative hope. I loved the patient staging here and the long moments of silence as Krapp goes around his desk to unlock his drawers revealing a banana; pretty much the first sound he makes is to cry out after he slips on the discarded peel.

James Hayes (Krapp). Photo Robert Workman

Eh Joe is altogether bleaker as Joe slowly but surely breaks down as the powerful voice of his dead wife cuts through his defences, hacking away at his silent resistance and relishing his wasted years. Let’s hope we’re kinder to ourselves when the time comes but this was extraordinary powerful theatre and Mr Buggy was mesmerising.

In comparison, The Old Tune was light relief as two old pals meet by chance and share misaligned memories of their past. In fairness Mr Cream (David Threlfall) has trouble remembering his grandchildren let alone previous decades and his pal Gorman (Niall Buggy) is little better, their recall about as reliable as Gorman’s malfunctioning barrel organ. Time is passing them by just as relentlessly as the constant stream of modern motor cars that often interrupt their discourse. Just two old fellas wondering what became of the people they used to be.

A tip of the hat to Louie Whitemore's atmospheric set and costume design as well as Max Pappenheim’s sound which plays such a vital role in all three plays especially in capturing every crack and syllable of Lisa Dwan’s voice and foregrounding the relentless rumble of progress passing by Cream and Gorman.

David Threlfall (Mr Cream). Photo Robert Workman

IThankYou Theatre Rating: ***** Pure concentrate of Beckett that gives the audience the full flavour of his words and intent thanks to excellent staging and genuinely astonishing performances.

The Beckett Triple Bill runs until Saturday 8th and I would urge you to get in as quick as you can as tickets are selling fast.

Distant voices, still lives… Agnes Colander - An Attempt at Life, Jermyn Street Theatre

This is only the second time Harley Granville Barker’s play has been performed with his intention of addressing gender politics, relationships and "The Sex Question", possibly persuading the 20-year old, that it was too frank to go public. Agnes Colander is woman seeking artistic independence but also a “marriage” that will allow her to realise that ambition.  That she keeps on defining these ambitions in the context of a relationship with a man says more about the era in which this play was written than anything else: Agnes cannot operate in society without a man to fund her and, more importantly to give her social standing.

Trevor Nunn will have addressed the question of sex frequently in the 37 Shakespeare plays he has overseen (that's the full set) and here his direction ensures that the play moves purposefully and with convincing performances. But it cannot escape the limits of its original construction, confounding our modern expectations with social compromises that are archaic now. That said, Barker is pushing the boundaries and some scenes are positively shocking for a play written in 1900 and there is a sensibility that would find fuller expression with The Voysey Inheritance (1905), about financial immorality, and Waste (1907). Seemingly he abandoned the play over fears of censorship and audience disapproval and when he re-read it in 1929, he made a note on the manuscript that it was “very poor”.

The only known copy of the play was by Colin Chambers in the British Library, and the American playwright Richard Nelson to revise before Nunn debuted it in Bath last year. It still feels a little uneven but there are some stunning passages that make the jaw drop – Agnes is not just a blue stocking she’s a seeker after truth and self-actualisation many decades before any of that became a woman’s right.

Naomi Frederick - all photographs from Robert Workman

At the start of the play, Agnes played by the magnetic Naomi Frederick, is found in her studio mulling over a work that she swiftly hides and replaces with a blander one when she hears a knock on her door – we don’t see the subject until the last moments of the play but it’s clear from the off that she is creatively frustrated. Her door is opened by the bear-like Danish painter Otto (Matthew Flynn) a curiously abrupt man who is purely dedicated to his art in a way Agnes can only dream of. He has the freedom to be himself – accepted by society even as his outspokenness veers towards cruelty and rudeness.

He has brought news of a telegram from Agnes’ estranged husband who wants her back. He is much older and their union was “arranged” but, stifled, she left to pursue her dream of being “more herself…”. But this dream has not worked, she is reduced to painting within the lines of expectation: producing the merely beautiful without saying anything… She is tempted to give it all up and return to the comforts of the rich man but, decides to follow her heart after Otto “proposes” – in his way, and the two move to France to love and to paint.

This is after a young man, Alexander Flint (Harry Lister Smith), who has been employed by her husband to keep a watch, also declares his love… he’s too young and too late, as Agnes is distracted by the thoughts of the splash of Otto’s paint and the firm line of his charcoal.

Naomi Frederick and Sally Scott- all photographs from Robert Workman

Over in France, the couple have the most artistic of arrangements – Otto does not want to marry and Agnes only wants to paint in the same animalistic way as he. But it’s not that simple and, once again, Agnes finds herself more muse than master. Is she being dominated by Otto and suppressed by his ferocity and simplicity in the same way as, over dinner, he pulls at the bread and mauls the chicken with his bare hands as she politely picks away…?

In the end Agnes must decide to break free on her own or to pin her hopes and talent onto the inconsistent attentions of Otto… cue a rather surprising denouement… ultimately it’s about The Sex Question and the play is rather coy on the answers as it had to be in 1900.

Frederick acts with fluidity and convinces as much as these lines will allow whilst Matthew Flynn gets a lot of the laughs as the freely-expressive Danish draughtsman. There’s good support too from Cindy-Jane Armbruster as Agnes’ long-suffering lady-servants, Lister-Smith as the wholesome Alexander and Sally Scott gives a buzzy cameo as expat Emmeline Majoribanks who is there to remind Agnes of social convention even when she enjoys breaking it by snogging Otto; perhaps “Emmeline” is there to contraindicate the importance of independent spirit?

A tip of the hat to Robert Jones’s stage design which has us right in the heart of things in both London and France; removed in space and time.

Agnes Colander runs at Jermyn Street until 16^th March, tickets and further details all at the box office.

IThankYouTheatre Rating: *** A fascinating adaptation of an important, if unfinished, play that has much to say about “the sex question” from a 1900’s male point of view.