THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
From the novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett; texts adapted by Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett
Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3LB, until 22 June 2024
www.thecoronettheatre.com; www.garestlazareireland.com
Samuel Beckett was a stickler for Form. The plays were plays, his Film was a film, and his novels were intended to be read and woe betide any Rookie auteur attempting to ‘adapt’ his work. He did however relent in the late ‘60s when one of his favourite actors, Jack McGowran, convinced him to turn the novels into three solo monologues with Beckett himself directing. BBC TV recordings of excerpts are still out there.
Here the Dublin based Gare St Lazare Ireland company, who have a have a great track record in bringing the plays and non dramatic prose texts of Beckett to the world, got the estate’s permission to restage it with Judy Hegarty Lovett directing and Conor Lovett performing as the generic vagrant/outsider character who was Beckett’s human archetype.
In Molloy a man recounts his effort at visiting his aging mother. On the way he is arrested for indecently (but hilariously) resisting and he encounters an old woman and her dog whom he manages to fatally run over with his bike. He’s one of Beckett’s most poignant characters whose deadpan responses to the world around him are both witty and profound. Written around the same time as Waiting for Godot these novels are infused too with that post war attitude of existentialist ‘ennui’.
The second monologue Malone Dies has Malone on his deathbed telling himself stories as he bides his final hours. He hits upon a character to present to us, McMahon, whose story involves a sojourn in an asylum (based on Dublin’s infamous St John of Gods), a lunatic nurse and a bizarre Easter Sunday outing to some islands led by worthy Trustees and resulting in an unfortunate blood bath.
The third, Malone Dies, dispenses with narrative entirely and we hear our narrator trying to make sense of his inner turmoil and the world. It is the most challenging but also has some of his most killer lines.
Written for the page the novels are packed with wonderfully ironic meta textual references, such as “Must I describe it? No, I won’t” or “I can’t record this fatuous colloquy anymore” as he gets bored with his own story.
Although it is perhaps unfair to compare with historic performers McGowran brought a great theatrical flourish to the monologues which crucially lightened the tone but also made you think that he didn’t believe himself either. Here Lovett, balding, intense and dressed in black but not in rags, is commanding and funny but far too cerebral a chap, lending the character the bearing of a university professor, perhaps sardonically performing for his students while always keeping the upper hand. There’s a difference between the meta textual references which are themselves funny and the attitude the character must have and here his self awareness doesn’t chime. It’s an intellectual sleight of hand which diminishes the more effective clownish wit that McGowran brought to it.
Still, you have to commend the effort to bring these great texts to new audiences. Molloy and Malone Dies run an hour each with The Unnameable at 40 minutes plus intervals.
