Lisa Dwan’s piercing insight into Beckett
Image overload but Dwan breathes new life into Beckett’s words
Lisa Dwan gave an astonishing vocal and physical performance at The Abbey this week in
No’s Knife, her own adaptation for stage of Samuel Beckett’s Texts For Nothing. He wrote them in the early 1950s when the horrors of World War II had left a profound mark on him. It’s not possible to condense the text into a simple summary and – for all the skill involved in the performance and the production – there was ultimately an overload of images in the intense 70 minutes. These were difficult to absorb without having some more tangible context or a chance to study them more closely. Most of Beckett’s other stage works are rooted in specific characters, making them more accessible.
The initial image, on a large screen, opened into a huge eye that seemed to drag the audience into itself; into a troubled mind, or a vision of existential hell? At first Dwan appeared on film as though she were drowning; then she was on the stage alone, in various harsh landscapes during the four scenes. But she was not so much a person as the disembodied voice of desolation – of the lost or the helpless. She adopted the accents and voices of other beings, male and female, using an extraordinary vocal range that took in anger, fear, misery and even at times incongruous humour.
It was impossible not to think of fleeing refugees as she wailed: ‘I can do nothing any more. I can’t go, I can’t stay – knowing none, known of none.’ Another voice telling her, ‘All you had to do was stay at home.’
What do you make of a phrase like: ‘I’m alone – I alone am?’ Is it just the same idea repeated, or a statement that the speaker alone exists, in some strange limbo between existence and nightmare? Despite the prevailing gloom, there’s possibly a glimmer of hope when she says: ‘A story is not compulsory… that’s the mistake I made… to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.’
The writing is profound and you could argue about the length and the effectiveness of the staging but not about the unforgettable performance.
‘Extraordinary vocal range takes in anger, fear, misery and even incongruous humour’