Fragments

Production photos by Pascal Victor/ArtComArt except bottom right, by Ernesto Rodrigues Agencia Estado
Synopsis
In Fragments, Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne interpret texts by Samuel Beckett, one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century.  Samuel Beckett was acclaimed in part for his incomparable concision, his unique mastery of the breathtakingly profound short work.Fragments has been assembled from the following five Beckett shorts: Rough for Theatre I, Rockaby, Act Without Words II, Neither, and Come and Go.Together, the five works in Fragments form a unified whole.  There is a kind of cumulative story in this collection, much of which is hidden, either whispered beyond our hearing, or evoked with the broadest brush strokes by characters that either speak in riddles or don’t speak at all.  Ambiguity and uncertainty—going nowhere and everywhere fast—reign in this dramatic collection, inviting the audience to fill in the particulars, to supply its own insight.  There is tremendous humor in Fragments—as there is in much of Beckett’s writing—which owes much to American silent and early talking films.  And yet each piece amuses only those who can be tickled by insights into the foibles of what makes humans human.