Hawaii
Beckett’s play ‘Lessness’
lives up to its nameNEVER fear -- we'll be getting back to things Hawaii tomorrow, but a final clean-up of our theater-going blitz of London, Ireland and San Francisco. Ten plays were dealt with in yesterday's column, leaving but one sad matinee remaining. I've long been a huge fan of writer Samuel Beckett and have acted in and directed many of his plays. So when I found out that the National Theater was doing a work called "Lessness," I made it a point to book a ticket. It proved to be a mistake. "Lessness" is an extremely short prose work Beckett wrote in 1969, the staging of which was not, I'm sure, ever a consideration. But Olwen Fouere, an acclaimed actress and her Gare St. Lazare Players, decided to stage it anyway. The four-and-a-half page prose work lasted 50 minutes and consisted of Fouere lying on a table, introducing pauses in places even Beckett never considered, and was boring in the extreme ...
THANK heaven for British television, for there I was able to get a wonderful Beckett fix: John Hurt in "Krapp's Last Tape," Sir Michael Gambon as Hamm in "Endgame," several Beckett works designed for the stage, "Act Without Words," both I and II, and others in what was something of a Beckett Festival. That included "Beckett on Film," featuring John Gielgud on his 96th birthday ... Thinking I'd had my fill of theater, I headed to Ireland, rented a car and began driving -- more on this adventure in a subsequent feature ...
On stage in Dublin
DESPITE having witnessed 11 works in London, I found myself scouring Dublin's theater ads and ended up booking two shows. One, "Ariel," by the estimable young Irish playwright Marina Carr, was at the Abbey, the celebrated venue founded by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory back in 1904. "Ariel" is a retelling of the Euripidean tragedy of a killing to create sympathy and in Carr's case, that of a hard-drinking Irish politico looking to get elected in a wave of sympathy over his daughter's death. Powerful stuff. Then there was "Closing Time" at the Tivoli Theater, Owen McCafferty's story about a pub and its increasingly drunken inhabitants. If watching these sorry denizens doesn't send you to AA, nothing will ...
Back in the U.S.A.
AFTER missing my direct Virgin-Atlantic flight to San Francisco, I opted to catch a slightly later flight directly to L.A. and hence to S.F. An attractive seatmate had given me her phone number and mobile phone number should I decide to stay longer, but I wanted desperately to get at least that much closer to home. Friends I told about this interlude had but a single response: "Are you CRAZY???" ...ARRIVING in S.F. at last and, keeping the Gaelic theme alive, checking into the Shannon Court Hotel, I began making the rounds of old haunts, renewing some friendships and making new ones. I read that Tony Curtis was in town, appearing in "Some Like It Hot," rang him up and chatted for a bit, taking in the slick musical that night with a couple of old friends. We visited backstage and he said there's talk -- nothing firm yet -- of doing the musical in Hawaii. Let's hope it happens. Tomorrow: Back home ...
Dave Donnelly has been writing on happenings
in Hawaii for the Star-Bulletin since 1968.
The Week That Was recalls items from Dave's 30 years of columns.Contact Dave by e-mail: ddonnelly@starbulletin.com