You have to begin (it seems to me) with the understanding that Beckett is obsessed with exploring mankind’s relationship to God and subsequently, life. Individual men and women with various versions of the same story. Nothing wrong with that. (God sticks us here in the midst of empty, joyless, torment, then occupies himself with other concerns. If he exists at all.) Beckett may wrap the same prize in a different trappings, but the layers are astonishing. Gogo and Didi eagerly expect the enigmatic, elusive Godot. Winnie and Willie are a married couple who spend their days in ordinary activities (washing, afternoon tea, saying their prayers, reading the paper) as a hill of sand creeps closer and closer towards their necks. Blind and confined to a wheelchair, Hamm keeps his parents, Nagg and Nell, in trashcans in his living room.
Wingspan’s current production of two short one acts: Footfalls and Not I, address the experiences of two different women. Beckett is very conscious of the distinct role of women in the world (perhaps the British patriarchy?) and how expectations can shape their behavior. It’s seemly for women to be diffident. To be charitable and serve. The woman in Footfalls is “May” and the other an unnamed woman whose life story is told in third person by a disembodied mouth. The two shows are presented as a diptych, Autonomous but informing one another. Footfalls is dimly and darkly lit, while Not I happens in total blackness, except for the isolated, oracular mouth. The incidental music chosen by Lowell Sargeant has urgent, frantic, incidental violins with an unnerving, foreboding quality. The experience in its entirely brings a damp, chill feeling of aloneness and despair.
May is a women of indeterminate age, who looks to be in her 40’s. Dressed in a kind of ragged nightgown, of some rough cloth, like burlap. She paces back and forth. Same short path, repeatedly. She has been caring for her invalid mother. All of her adult life, it seems. Her voice is meek and soft. When she offers to help her mother with sponge baths or moistening her lips or prayer, her mother says Yes, but it is too soon. Beckett is so meticulous in tone and diction and using language as a kind of desolate music. Intricacy of sound and meaning and layered entendres. You’ve got to listen carefully, with focus. May describes a woman (perhaps herself) visiting church though there seems to be no comfort there. May is eclipsed by her mother, despite though she’s in another room entirely and the illness that incapacitates her. May bears witness to her own presence, though she’s like a sleight, blue, flame flickering.
The anonymous voice in Not I describes a woman in her 70’s, beginning with her birth a tiny thing and we feel from that moment she’s barely there. Her father disappears almost immediately after the sex that creates her. Her mother abandons her shortly thereafter. She’s an orphan. What follows is a purposeful but somehow ragged, disconnected, spontaneous searching for the words to capture the substance of the heroine’s experience. Stream of sensations stagger. There’s a buzzing in her skull. A kind of dull, yet powerful epiphany arising in her mind. A flower opening slowly but like a bullet expanding. We get a sense of her awareness baffled and muffled through the world (a kind of lightness or coasting) until an introspected change occurs, simmering. Beckett reveals her life in a litany of groping for meaning, in the midst of ennui and void.
By now it must be clear that Susan Sargeant: the director, her dedicated, brave cast: Jennifer Kuenzer and Susan Sargeant and her diligent, capable crew have put the Labors of Hercules to shame. These intrepid, still avant-garde pieces by Beckett are so demanding and outre’. It’s hard to imagine how they’ve pulled this off. Like being caught in a small room with angry bees. This is impeccable, fearless theatre.
Wingspan Theatre Company presents: Two by Beckett: Footfalls and Not I, playing October 3rd-19th, 2019. 521 E Lawther Dr (at North Cliff Drive), Dallas, Texas 75218. (214) 675-6573. wingspan@wingspantheatre.com