Fragments
 
Production photos (top-bottom): 1,5,6 by Pascal Victor/ArtComArt; 2,3,4,7 by Graham Michael |
15 November 2011 – The New York Times Review: “Fragments” culls as much vivid comic light…as it does existential darkness. |
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| 14 November 2011 – Associated Press Review: “Positively meloncholy poetry” |
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| 14 November 2011 – Time Out New York Review: “Exquisitely focused and affectingly plain” |
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| 4 December 2011 – The Irish Echo Review |
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| 14 November 2011 – Theatermania Review: “Superlative production” |
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| “The revered director Peter Brook takes a somewhat unusual view of Samuel Beckett. In a programme note to this selection of some of the dramatist’s shorter pieces, he writes: “Today with the passage of time we see how false were the labels first stuck on Beckett – despairing, negative, pessimistic.” Actually despairing, negative and pessimistic would seem to me to be perfectly accurate descriptions of much of Beckett’s work. [...] Nevertheless Brook is right to suggest that doom and gloom isn’t the complete picture. There is something uplifting about the courage with which Beckett stares into the void, something heroic in the humour he wrings from desperation, something deeply moving about the manifest human sympathy of his writing. These five brief pieces are little more than chippings from the master’s work table, yet in its modest, unfussy away, this is a revelatory evening. [...] Cruelty, laughter and unexpected tenderness combine in Rough for Theatre I, as a blind beggar (Magni), and a wheelchair-bound cripple (Houben) try, and finally fail, to establish a mutually helpful relationship. And once again there is also an unexpected zest for life in the writing, as the characters remember the women in their lives and salivate at the thought of corned beef. Brook’s spare, simple staging is alive to every nuance in these plays, and the three performers bring a richly beguiling mixture of light and shade to their performances, with Houben and Magni supplying delightful physical comedy, while the sad, hypnotic Hunter beautifully delivers Beckett’s dark poetry of death. What riches are to be found in these apparently insubstantial minor works.” – Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph | ||
| “Beckett’s plays don’t lend themselves to being described in culinary metaphors. You’d scarcely call Waiting for Godot a “feast” of drama or Happy Days a “banquet”, indisputable masterpieces though they both are. “Soufflés with substance” is how a programme note portrays the five short pieces in Fragments, a production by Beckett’s friend and fellow-expatriate in Paris, the great director Peter Brook.Nutritious is what they certainly are, though they wouldn’t have me reaching for the cook-book in an effort to evoke them. Music is what comes to mind as you sit entranced by the skill of the pacing, the charm of the order in which they are presented, and the quite extraordinarily beautiful shifts of lighting that carry you from one piece to another like some deep controlling intelligence. You experience the show as a strange, haunting, humorous chamber symphony in which three of the movements are scherzos.” – Paul Taylor, The Independent | ||
| “Samuel Beckett and Peter Brook. Two theatre gurus: the playwright, tall and gnarled; the director, small and contained. If Beckett were alive, he might feel tempted to put them into one of his double-act dramas. But here we get the work of one upon the work of the other. And it’s a compliment to this evening of Beckett dramas directed by Brook that you soon forget the status of both artists and just enjoy the work. The show consists, as the title suggests, of short Beckett pieces. They give us distilled Beckett: that bleak vision of humanity struggling to make sense of it all before toppling into the grave. But they also give us Beckett the clown. And in the hands of Brook and the three actors – Kathryn Hunter, Marcello Magni and Jos Houben – the sharp observation of human conduct is lovingly delivered. [...]” – Sarah Hemming, The Financial Times | ||
| “[...] Both Beckett and Brook have an aura of unapproachable, irreproachable saintliness, but here the director’s brisk, common-sense attitude is a good antidote. Bare, beady-eyed, unflinching and painfully funny, this is Beckett as it should be done, even if it’s not always Beckett as Beckett said it should be done. – Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times | ||
| In this production, he has mined the seams of Beckett and found pure gold tinged with true comedy.”- Sophie Gorman, The Irish Independent | ||
