★★
Adelaide Fringe. Lisa Angove. Star Theatres. 6 Mar 2023
The program opines that the Irish playwright and novelist, Samuel Beckett, is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th Century. While he obviously was an important writer and the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1969, there are few who have gone inside people’s heads in theatre the way Beckett has.
Footfalls is grim viewing. The action is minimalist: a middle-aged woman in decrepit condition simply paces across the front of the stage dressed in a ragged and worn dressing gown, or worse. Occasionally she stops to converse with an older voice that we identity at that of her mother.
Lisa Angove’s woman is a study of pitiable pain and confusion. But she never changes it up to signal the distinct parts of the play as outlined by Beckett. Her grimaces are awesome but tiresome. Angove too often attacks the lines with screeches and loses fidelity. Some of the staging elements evoking symbolic representations of Beckett’s themes are awol, so the show is even more minimalist than even Beckett imagined. The Beckett estate has been known to close down reprises that don’t obey the stage notes with precision, so how did they get away with that?
The direction by Phil Roberts is derived from Ralph Wilson’s direction in some way. Even the program notes are Wilson’s. The mother’s voice – Joyce Glynn – is recorded on scratchy old media and irritating pauses occur betwixt the live and recorded components. Her intonation is the ticket.
If you don’t know Beckett, this production might scare you off forever. But you’ll have fun figuring out what the heck is going on.
David Grybowski
When: 6 to 10 Mar
Where: Star Theatres – Star Theatre Two
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
