Endgame at The Old Vic was typical Beckett

For reasons that escape me there is a flood of Beckett performances this year and hot on my visit to Jermyn Street Theatre for a Triple Bill of his works there I found myself at The Old Vic for two more.

As is customary at The Old Vic I went for a seat in the gods, Lilian Baylis Circle where seat A-16 cost me a reasonable £30. There is a safety rail directly across the view but, depending on the staging, I can either sit forward and look over it or slink down and look over it. This time I did a little of both.

Looking around it did not seem to be much of a Beckett audience and I suspect a lot of people were pulled in by Alan Cumming and/or Danial Radcliffe. My suspicions were reinforced when after the short opening play, Rough for Theatre II, the young woman behind me asked the person next to her to explain what was going on in the play as if expecting clarity and simplicity from Beckett.

Rough for Theatre II was an exploration of office work with documents explored and sections read out. Of course the situation was more complex than that and this was done while a man was poised to throw himself out of a window. The pointlessness and the pernicketyness of the situation made this a light funny piece, a reasonable appetiser for the main course.

Endgame felt something like Happy Days with the main character, played by Alan Cumming this time, unable, or unwilling, to move but the differences were significant; here there was much more dialogue with other characters and that dialogue was questioning.

It was still Beckett dialogue though and as with all his other plays (that I know of) it was poetic, quirky, humorous and pointless. That is what I had gone to see and Endgame delivered.

Beckett Triple Bill at Jermyn Street Theatre was delightfully strange

January 27 is my birthday so, even more than usual, I got to decide what we saw that night and I chose Beckett Triple Bill at Jermyn Street Theatre partially because it was Beckett and partially because it was on at Jermyn Street Theatre.

And being my birthday meant that I could justify eating at Getti which is directly above the theatre. Getti is a posh enough restaurant without being ridiculously expensive, which is could be given the neighbourhood. The bill was under £70 for two courses and an extravagant aperitif each.

Completing the financials, my theatre seat Row A  Seat 3 was just £25.

The view from my seat was almost exactly that in the poster, without the stars.

The evening consisted of three short plays, Krapp’s Last Tape, Eh Joe and The Old Tune. These were plays with few voices, only four across the three pieces.

In Krapp's Last Tape an old man is making a recording of his past year and in preparation for this he plays some of his former ones which, in turn, refer to earlier tapes. It was one voice but from different times.

"Eh Joe" was said several times by a female voice speaking inside another old man's head. She recalled some of his previous actions, including her murder. Whether it was a true story or not did not matter, what did was the sneering tone and the phrasing.

Finally, in The Old Tune, two more old men met for the first time in several years and began a strange conversation on shared banalities with each correcting the other on the details.

It is easy to jump to Waiting For Godot when thinking about Beckett and this case the jump is justified as all three plays carried that same sense of absurd whimsy; conversations of no import that go nowhere and do so delightfully.

Beckett Triple Bill was a great birthday present to buy for myself.

Happy Days at the Young Vic was bemusing and brilliant

I missed this production of Happy Days when it first came to the Young Vic but was aware that it was getting good reviews and so I paid more attention when it came back for second run. So much so that I bought my ticket for a performance in February 15 way back in March 14.

The original plan was to take in an exhibition in the afternoon, eat somewhere nice and then go to the theatre but the clock got the better of me and the plan got adjusted to a lovely walk along the South Bank from Waterloo to the Tate Modern where the only display I saw was of cakes in one of the coffee bars.

I did manage to get to The Refinery Bankside for a foodie treat. The helpful staff also went and found me a Oyster Card holder when I pointed out that there was not one with the bill and I showed them that I was using one from a previous visit. Every time that I go there I moan to myself that there is nothing like it in Richmond or Kingston where I find eating out more of a challenge than a treat.

From there it was a short walk to the Young Vic and I timed my arrival well to get there after the theatre doors had opened and so resisted the temptation for a beer and missed the hassle of queueing for one.

Inside the theatre the camera police were busy and attentive so I was unable to take any photos but the internet provided me with the picture below which was more-or-less the view that I had from my seat (B36 which cost me £35). For this production the stage was set in thrust-mode with seating on three sides. Given that Juliet Stevenson was stuck in position throughout the play the central section was definitely the place to be.

My knowledge of Beckett was somewhat limited, I had only seen Waiting for Godot many years ago and the adapted short story First Love more recently, so other than strange, I did not know what to expect. I got plenty of strange!

It is possible to over simplify Happy Days in the same way that it is Godot. A woman, Winnie, is buried in the sand and talks at length to us, herself and her mostly hidden husband Willie. Despite being buried and unable to move, Winnie is relentlessly happy. And that's about it.

With Winnie immobilised and Willie either out of sight or absent most of the time, there was very little physical action. The exception was the methodical way that Winnie gets things out of her bag and arranges them before her. These things included a toothbrush and a gun.

What drove the play, and drove it brilliantly, was the rich dialogue and Juliet Stevenson's brilliant delivery of this. This was essentially a one woman show and it was one hell of a show with one hell of a performance from the woman.

Winnie told us about her hopes for the day, it was always expected to be another happy one, and she also told some tender stories from her past. Her conversation flit between times and subjects and that kept it fresh and engaging. When Winnie spoke we wanted to listen.

There were some big themes at play, she was buried in sand after all, but Happy Days is not a play that I would pretend to understand. Some of it seemed more obvious than other bits but that may have been my misunderstanding.

The lack of an obvious plot or message only added to the play's interest and left the dialogue and Juliet Stevenson's performance at the heart of everything. I have seen some mighty fine performances over the years and this was right up there with the best of them.

First Love at the Arcola Theatre was strangely charming, and funny

The reason that I am hoping to work in London more in future, as opposed to somewhere like Reading, is that I can make spur of the decisions to go to things like First Love at the Arcola Theatre.

The play had been on my interested list since it was first announced but, as is often the case, the problem was finding a free evening to go and see it.

I had arranged to be in London that day for no specific reason and when my evening was still free at lunchtime I went online and booked a ticket. Given the late hour I considered myself lucky to get a seat in the front row even if it was a little off to one side.

The weather was kind too and the rain that the Met Office said was due stayed away and that allowed me to walk the four kilometres or so to the Arcola. I had walked there before and now I had an additional incentive to do so with the iPhone counting my steps for me. I had plenty of time so I took a slightly obscure route to see some new things and to log some additional steps.

I got there in good time for a coffee and a sandwich of some sort, I'm fairly certain that it had humus in it, and to rest from my gentle walk before the play. I also had time to grab a beef to take in with me. Things were changing at the Arcola and my usual London Fields Red was not available as they were changing their supplier but they did have some London Fields Porter so I had one of those, mainly because it came in a decent sized bottle.

I headed for my seat (A4, a bargain at £18.00) and settled down for the one-man one-act show.

All that I knew about First Love was that it was taken from a short story by Samuel Beckett, and that was easily enough for me. Being a story it was narrated to us with the actor, Conor Lovett, adding expressions, gestures and movement.

The person subject to the First Love was an unusual man, a social outcast with autistic symptoms. He was living with his father and staying in his bedroom all day. When his father died the rest of the family took the opportunity of him going to the outside toilet to lock him out of the house with his few possessions. The story was narrated in the first person so it was through his unfamiliar viewpoint that we heard the story, much as in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The other play that came to mind was Elling in which two friends with what now call Learning Difficulties (not a very good name but it will do) tried to get on in the real world. In both cases out sympathies were with the story-teller and that story was one of charm and warmth.

The story of First Love was just that, how the narrator came to meet and end up living with a woman. It was a slow relationship due to the narrator's extreme reluctance to be with other people and even though not a lot happened it took almost an hour and a half to tell the story.

Two things gave the story its pleasing length, the extreme detail that the narrator went in to and the hesitant way that he told it, hence the suggestion that he had autism. To give an example of the superb delivery, at one point Conor was silent for almost two minutes while his character was trying to work out what to say and it was a dramatic two minutes - excellent theatre without words or actions, just expressions.

First Love was a remarkable, powerful and entertaining drama. The Arcola does that. Often.