BECKETT 5
★★★★
When: 8 p.m. Friday–Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (see theater website schedule for 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays); through March 5.
Where: Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.
Tickets: $30–$35.
Length: 2 hrs., including intermission.
Suitability: Mature teens and adults.
Information: 310-477-2055, www.odysseytheatre.com.
★★★★
When: 8 p.m. Friday–Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (see theater website schedule for 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays); through March 5.
Where: Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.
Tickets: $30–$35.
Length: 2 hrs., including intermission.
Suitability: Mature teens and adults.
Information: 310-477-2055, www.odysseytheatre.com.
Just the name conjures a headache in some and bliss in others. Playwright Samuel Beckett is considered one of the most-influential 20th-century playwrights, certainly within Theatre of the Absurd style, his “Waiting for Godot” at the peak of those works.
At the Odyssey Theatre, five of Beckett’s short plays are being performed under the umbrella title that bears his name. With that much advance notice, the audience certainly should know what to expect.
And knowing that the Odyssey’s resident company of superb veteran actors, the KOAN Unit, under director Ron Sossi, is bringing the works to life, we are assured the production will be deep and sharp.
The works are staged on set designer Mark Guirguis’ simple black-box area. A raised platform upstage, where doors open into unseen rooms, gets used for one of the pieces but remains in murky darkness for others, thanks to lighting designer Chu-Hsuan Chang’s mysterious but warm illumination.
Opening act
“Act Without Words II” opens the production. Alan Abelew and Beth Hogan hunker inside white plastic sacks, until each is goaded (Norbert Weisser clad head to toe in black, wielding a spear) into a day’s action. Abelew, as “A,” loathes every moment. Even his food, a tasty-looking carrot pulled out of his pocket, prompts A to spit out his sole sustenance. A has turned to prayer and pharmaceuticals to get through his days.
Hogan, as “B,” loves every moment of the day, though the manic pace might take its toll. Chronically checking her watch, compulsively exercising, obsessed with her appearance, at least she relies on herself to get through it all, ending with a bit of self-reflection.
Beckett reputedly felt annoyed when people presumed references to his earlier plays, but the carrots, black suit and bowler hat of “Godot” greatly tempt us here.
“Come and Go” finds three women gathered on a bench in an enigmatic reunion. Diana Cignoni and Sheelagh Cullen join Hogan to perhaps relive their school days, giggle girlishly, share information or spread misinformation, and still find communal support.
Their names — Flo, Vi, Ru — evoke flowers, and they’re dressed in floral pastels, with pristine white satin Mary Jane shoes. But something darker is at work. Each one of the three wanders off while two stay behind to whisper. What they share might be salacious gossip, or it might be news of impending death.
A darker turn
The plays get even darker with “Catastrophe,” in which Director and Assistant literally and figuratively manipulate Protagonist, who represents actor, audience and nation. Sossi has swapped genders of Director and Assistant, casting Hogan as the imperious Director, oblivious to the figure’s suffering, and Abelew as the obsequious Assistant, who was only following orders. Weisser’s Protagonist doesn’t collapse, likely fearful of the consequences. But when the others leave, he prods us with a chilling, astonishing, richly emotional stare.
“Footfalls” finds Cignoni as a daughter, pacing in front of her mother’s doorway, and Cullen (unseen) voicing the mother. It’s perhaps the most deeply psychological of the plays here, yet it’s also full of wordplay. The mother may be dead or dying, the daughter may be living in the past or living an unfulfilled life now, but Christian imagery reflects constraints on the peripatetic figure.
After an intermission that lets the audience gather breath and wits, “Krapp’s Last Tape” stars Weisser in one of Beckett’s better-known short works. A “wearish old man” listens to tape recordings of himself at younger ages. At each age, he has looked back from a vantage of more experience and more disdain.
Despite the shabby appearance and goofy antics, Weisser is an elegant Krapp of rue, nostalgia, wryness and the wisdom of age and experience.
Beckett included detailed stage directions with his scripts. In “Come and Go,” for example, his directions are longer than the dialogue. Sossi uses some, leads his troupe elsewhere on others, encouraging intellectual and emotional responses to Beckett’s works.
Costume designer Audrey Eisner provides the crisply evocative looks, while sound designer Christopher Moscatiello creates atmospheres of subtle mystery.
So, what to expect here? As in life, those willing to observe, to think, to accept that some things are imponderable but still worth considering, will fare best.
Dany Margolies is a Los Angeles–based writer.
Beckett 5
Rating: 4 stars.
When: 8 p.m. Friday–Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (see theater website schedule for 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays); through March 5.
Where: Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.
Tickets: $30–$35.
Length: 2 hrs., including intermission.
Suitability: Mature teens and adults.
Information: 310-477-2055, www.odysseytheatre.com.
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