Play (2000 film)
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''Play'' is a one-act play by
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German as ''Spiel'' on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau, Germany, directed by
Deryk Mendel Deryk Mendel (1920 – 28 May 2013) was a British ballet dancer, choreographer, actor and director. He was a friend of Samuel Beckett, who wrote the one-act mime ''Act Without Words I'' for him in 1956. Music was by his cousin John S. Beckett. Me ...
, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic in London. It was not well-received upon its British premiere.


Synopsis

The curtain rises on three identical grey funeral " urns",Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 443 about three feet tall by preference,Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 159 arranged in a row facing the audience. They contain three
stock character A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, or a film whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. There is a wide range of st ...
s. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his
mistress Mistress is the feminine form of the English word "master" (''master'' + ''-ess'') and may refer to: Romance and relationships * Mistress (lover), a term for a woman who is in a sexual and romantic relationship with a man who is married to a d ...
(W2). Their " ces reso lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns."Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 147 Beckett had used similar imagery before, Mahood's jar in '' The Unnameable'', for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in '' Endgame''. At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus"; the effect is unintelligible. The main part of this play is made up of short, occasionally fragmented sentences spoken in a " pid tempo throughout" "which in his 1978 rehearsals elikened to a lawn mower – a burst of energy followed by a pause, a renewed burst followed by another pause."Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 445 "He wrote each part separately, then interspersed them, working over the proper breaks in the speeches for a long time before he was satisfied." One character speaks at a time and only when a strong spotlight shines in his or her face. The style is reminiscent of Mouth's logorrhoea in '' Not I'', the obvious difference being that these characters constantly use
first person First person or first-person may refer to: * First person (ethnic), indigenous peoples, usually used in the plural * First person, a grammatical person * First person, a gender-neutral, marital-neutral term for titles such as first lady and first ...
pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts o ...
. Clichés and puns abound. While one is talking the other two are silent and in darkness. They neither acknowledge the existence of the others around them (M: "To think we were never together") nor appear aware of anything outside their own being and past (W2: "At the same time I prefer this to . . . the other thing. Definitely. There are endurable moments"). Beckett writes that this spotlight "provokes" the character's speech, and insists that whenever possible, a single, swivelling light should be used, rather than separate lights switching on and off. In this manner the spotlight is "expressive of a unique inquisitor".
Billie Whitelaw Billie Honor Whitelaw (6 June 1932 – 21 December 2014) was an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and was regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works. She was al ...
referred to it as "an instrument of torture." The spotlight is in effect the play's fourth character. In an almost
fugal In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the c ...
style the three obsess over the affair. Each presents his or her own version of the truth told in the past tense and each from his or her respective points of view. It is one of Beckett's most 'musical' pieces with "a
chorus Chorus may refer to: Music * Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse * Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound * Chorus form, song in which all verse ...
for three voices,
orchestration Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...
, stage directions concerning tempo, volume and tone, a '' da capo'' repeat of the entire action" and a short
coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
. Towards the end of the script, there is the concise instruction: "Repeat play."Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 157 Beckett elaborates on this in the notes, by saying that the repeat might be varied. " the London production, variations were introduced: a weakening of light and voices in the first repeat, and more so in the second; an abridged second opening; increasing breathlessness; changes in the order of the opening words." The purpose of this is to suggest a gradual winding down of the action for he writes of "the impression of falling off which this would give, with the suggestion of a conceivable dark and silence in the end, or of an indefinite approximating towards it."Knowlson, J., (Ed.) ''Samuel Beckett: an Exhibition'' (London: Turret Books, 1971), p. 92 At the end of this second repeat, the play appears as if it is about to start again for a third time (as in ''Act Without Words II''), but does not get more than a few seconds into it before it suddenly stops.


The affair

"The affair was unexceptional. From the moment when the man tried to escape his tired marriage and odious professional commitments by taking a mistress, vents took a predictable enough course:the wife soon began to ‘smell her off him’;Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 151 there were painful recriminations when the wife accused the man, hired a private detective, threatened to kill herself, and confronted the mistress in an old rambling house reminiscent of '' Watt'' (and where the servant again is 'Erskine') ... The man renounced the mistress, was forgiven by his wife who 'suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the
Riviera ''Riviera'' () is an Italian word which means "coastline", ultimately derived from Latin , through Ligurian . It came to be applied as a proper name to the coast of Liguria, in the form ''Riviera ligure'', then shortened in English. The two areas ...
or …
Grand Canary Gran Canaria (, ; ), also Grand Canary Island, is the third-largest and second-most-populous island of the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the Atlantic coast of Northwest Africa which is part of Spain. the island had a population of that c ...
,'Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 150 and then, rue to form returned to the mistress, this time to elope with her. n timetheir relationship too became jaded, and the man" abandons her as well. According to Knowlson and John Pilling in ''Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett'', “" e three figures in ''Play'' … are not three-dimensional characters. Any attempt to analyse them as if they were would be absurd. The
stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
predominates … heybelong … to the artificial world of
melodrama A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exces ...
and romance embodied in romanticized fiction."


Biographical references

During the late 1950s when staying in London, Beckett often met with
Barbara Bray Barbara Bray (née Jacobs; 24 November 1924 – 25 February 2010) was an English translator and critic. Early life Bray was born in Maida Vale, London; her parents had Belgian and Jewish origins. An identical twin (her sister Olive Classe was al ...
, at the time a script-editor with the BBC. A small and attractive widow in her thirties, she was also intelligent and well read. “Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted to her and she to him. Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of a relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with of is long-time partner Suzanne, for the rest of his life.” In short time their association became “a very intimate and personal one.” “In a visit to Paris in January 1961, Barbara … informed Beckett that she intended to move hereto live permanently”Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 480 “a move which had been discussed more than once with Sam.”Cronin, A., ''Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist'' (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 500 His response was unusual. In March he married Suzanne in a civil ceremony in the seaside town of
Folkestone Folkestone ( ) is a port town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England. The town lies on the southern edge of the North Downs at a valley between two cliffs. It was an important harbour and shipping port for most of the 19th and 20t ...
, England. Ostensibly this was to ensure if he died before her Suzanne would “inherit the rights to his work, since, under French law, there was no ‘
common-law wife Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, marriage, informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal framework where a couple may be considered married without having formally registered their relation as a civil ...
’ legislation … Or he may simply have wanted to affirm where his true loyalty lay. Whatever the reason, the marriage made it clear … that he was unwilling to leave the woman with whom he had already lived for more than twenty years.” For all that, in June 1961 Bray still decided to move and despite his recent marriage “ most every day
e went E, or e, is the fifth Letter (alphabet), letter and the second vowel#Written vowels, vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worl ...
round, often spending a good part of the day or a large part of the evening there.” “Oddly enough, this side of his life was ot wellknown about in Paris … eckett’snatural reserve and well-developed sense of decorum were allied to his fear of giving offence to Suzanne.” Anthony Cronin notes that strangely – or perhaps not so strangely – during this time he was often to be found talking “fervently and seriously about suicide.” Despite his unwillingness to do much about it he was clearly suffering badly from guilt. To comply with the law Beckett “was obliged to be in residence in Folkestone for a minimum of two weeks to allow him to be married in the
Registry Office A register office or The General Register Office, much more commonly but erroneously registry office (except in official use), is a British government office where births, deaths, marriages, civil partnership, stillbirths and adoptions in England, ...
there” and this time spent there observing the locals may well have influenced the “ middle class, English, ‘ Home Counties’” setting of ''Play'' though James Knowlson also points to two visits to Sweetwater about the same time. “
Ash Ash or ashes are the solid remnants of fires. Specifically, ''ash'' refers to all non-aqueous, non- gaseous residues that remain after something burns. In analytical chemistry, to analyse the mineral and metal content of chemical samples, ash ...
and Snodland” are both towns in Kent. An important point to mention here is that it was during the first London production that he encountered
Billie Whitelaw Billie Honor Whitelaw (6 June 1932 – 21 December 2014) was an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and was regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works. She was al ...
for the first time. “Whitelaw’s deep brooding voice caught so many inflections that Beckett found himself at times listening to her instead of rehearsing the play.”


Reception

In 1998, David Benedict of '' The Independent'' argued that ''Play'' is a "finer, more dramatically distilled" work than '' Waiting for Godot'' (1953).


Interpretations

“The earliest version (April 1962) was written for a woman and two men, Syke and Conk, figures in white boxes. In the final version we are presented instead with, as Michael Robinson describes it in ''The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett'', “the three corners of love’s eternal triangle (the emphasis here is on the eternal) … They have no names ow simply the designations M, W1 and W2 which aim at anonymity but also stand for all men and women who have, like them, been caught up in a three-part love affair,” The play is entitled ''Play'', in the same way that Beckett's only venture into
film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
is called ''
Film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
'' but as always with Beckett there are other levels. “Speaking of his previous life the man remarks: ‘I know now, all that was just … play’, but what then is the meaning of ‘all this? And when will this become the same?’ All three characters admit that life was senseless yet there appears to be ‘no sense in this … either, none whatsoever’; though this does not prevent them from making ‘the same mistakes as when it was the sun that shone, of looking for sense where possibly there is none. They are playing … a pointless game with unending time of which they are the playthings.” This also could be a reference to one of the world's most famous theatrical metaphors: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” In writing to
George Devine George Alexander Cassady Devine (20 November 1910 – 20 January 1966) was an English theatrical manager, director, teacher, and actor based in London from the early 1930s until his death. He also worked in TV and film. Early life and education ...
, who directed the Old Vic production, Beckett suggests that “the inquirer (light) begins to emerge as no less a victim of his inquiry than they and as needing to be free, within narrow limits, literally to act the part, i.e. to vary only slightly his speeds and intensities.” But the role of the light is even more ambiguous, for it has also been seen as “a metaphor for our attention (relentless, all-consuming, whimsical)” and a way of “switching on and switching off speech exactly as a playwright does when he moves from one line of dialogue on his page to the next.” Neither of these analogies conflicts with the more popular views where the spotlight is believed to represent God, or some other moral agent tasked with assessing, each character's case to be relieved from the binds of the urn by having them relive this relationship, which has ruined all their lives. This view ascribes a motive to the light beyond mere torture. That may not be the case. Just as easily as God, the light could represent the devil. This reliving of the details surrounding the affair only takes up the first half of the text however; Beckett called this part the ‘Narration.’ As Paul Lawley says in "Beckett’s dramatic counterpoint: a reading of ''Play''", “ e second half of the text (preceded by a five second long blackout) – called ‘Meditation’ by Beckett himself – sheds a subtle new light on the first. In the Meditation each of the heads casts about for the sense of its situation, considers the nature of the light, probes for certainties amid the darkness and then makes an attempt to imagine what has happened to the other two corners of this particular Eternal Triangle ... We can now see that the heads are not chained exclusively to their ‘past’, their narration(s): they are victims of the light, certainly, but not only victims, for they can recognize themselves as such and can speak of the light when forced to speak by the light. The light obliges them to speak but it does not necessarily determine ''what'' they speak – yet we only realize this in the Meditation section of the text.”Lawley, P., ‘Beckett’s dramatic counterpoint: a reading of ''Play''’ in ''
Journal of Beckett Studies The ''Journal of Beckett Studies'' publishes academic articles relating to the work of Samuel Beckett, (1906–1989), the Irish poet, dramatist and playwright. Published twice yearly by Edinburgh University Press in April and September, it was ...
'' 9 (1983)
“They cope with the light in various ways and natures. W1 screams at the light: ‘Get off me’ and she wonders what she must do to satisfy the disturbing and tormenting light. W2 is content with the idea that the light must know that she is doing her best. But she also wonders if she is perhaps a little ‘unhinged’ (meaning that she may go mad). For M the light enables fantasy. He imagines the two women drinking
green tea Green tea is a type of tea that is made from '' Camellia sinensis'' leaves and buds that have not undergone the same withering and oxidation process which is used to make oolong teas and black teas. Green tea originated in China, and since the ...
together in the places they have each been with him and comforting each other. He fantasises waking up with both women and then going for a boat trip with the two of them on a summer's afternoon. “At the end of the second part, M is completely aware of the mechanism of the light but not aware of his own narcissism” however. “If the play consisted only of the Narration it would be as though the light were obliging them not only to speak, but to speak only of these events, to tell only this story.” Many of Beckett's plays and prose pieces are located “in ‘places’ which may strike us as being most adequately described as ‘
Hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell ...
’, ‘ Limbo’ or ‘ Purgatory’– and the parallels with Dante are always tempting” – and indeed the most popular interpretation of ''Play'' is that the three are in some place like this. The use of urns to encase the bodies of the three players is thought to symbolise their entrapment inside the demons of their past; the way in which all three urns are described at the start of the play as "touching" each other is often deciphered as symbolising the shared problem which all three characters have endured. “The whole situation resembles very closely that of ''
Bérénice ''Berenice'' (french: Bérénice) is a five-act tragedy by the French 17th-century playwright Jean Racine. ''Berenice'' was not played often between the 17th and the 20th centuries. It was premiered on 21 November 1670 by the Comédiens du Roi ...
'', in which two men, the Emperor Titus and King Antiochus, are in love with the heroine;
Bérénice ''Berenice'' (french: Bérénice) is a five-act tragedy by the French 17th-century playwright Jean Racine. ''Berenice'' was not played often between the 17th and the 20th centuries. It was premiered on 21 November 1670 by the Comédiens du Roi ...
, for her part, is in love with Titus and regards Antiochus as her dearest friend. Yet the tragedy ends, bloodlessly, with Titus remaining unwillingly in Rome, while the other two reluctantly leave the city to go their separate ways. By the end of ''Bérénice'', all three major characters have threatened to commit
suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
; perhaps the three characters in ''Play'' are being punished because they ''have'' committed suicide. The text certainly indicates that very least the husband might have “sought refuge in death” also “ t only does W1 threaten both her own life and that of W2, but W1 describes herself as ‘Dying for dark,’ and W2 affirms, ‘I felt like death.’ As so often with Beckett, the loose clichés assume an eerie literality.” Beckett tasked himself with re-reading all of Racine’s plays in the mid-1950s and James Knowlson suggests that “this daily diet of Racinian claustrophobia forced Beckett to concentrate on the true essentials of theatre: Time, Space and Speech hichpointed him in the direction that made a tightly focused, monologic play like '' Happy Days'' or ''Play'' possible. It is conceivable that the three parties are not actually dead at all. Purgatory is, after all, not a theological concept Beckett would have been brought up with though Dante’s interpretation of it did catch his imagination. In the final paragraph of his 1929 essay "Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce" (whose strained, unpleasant second sentence reads, in full, "The conception of Philosophy and Philology as a pair of nigger minstrels out of the Teatro dei Piccoli is soothing, like the contemplation of a carefully folded ham-sandwich"), Beckett makes a striking comparison between Dante’s version of Purgatory and Joyce’s: “Dante's is conical and consequently implies culmination. Mr. Joyce's is spherical and excludes culmination … On this earth that is isPurgatory.". If the trio are separated physically then each would be in a private hell where he or she imagines and reimagines what may have happened to the other two and relives the events of the narration in his or her own mind. If we view the three urns purely as a theatrical device to bring these separate points of view together this interpretation is also valid. “Life on earth, the endless recurring cycle of history, constitutes Purgatory for Joyce in '' Finnegans Wake''. From Joyce’s Purgatory there is no escape, not even for the individual human being, who dies only to be reborn into the cycle. Likewise Beckett’s take on Purgatory is that it “is a state rather than a process.”


Music

In 1965
Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...
composed music for a production of ''Play''. The piece was scored for two soprano saxophones, and is his first work in a minimalist
idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...
– an idiom which was substantially influenced by the work of Beckett.


Film


''Comédie'' (1966)

In 1966 Beckett worked with a young director,
Marin Karmitz Marin Karmitz (born 7 October 1938) is a Romanian-French businessman whose career has spanned the French film industry, including director, producer, film distributor, and operator of a chain of cinemas. Karmitz attended film school at IDHE ...
(an assistant to
Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...
as well as Roberto Rossellini), on a film version of ''Play'', resulting in the film, ''Comédie''. The cast included
Michael Lonsdale Michael Edward Lonsdale-Crouch (24 May 1931 – 21 September 2020), commonly known as Michael Lonsdale and sometimes named as Michel Lonsdale, was a French actor and author who appeared in over 180 films and television shows. He is best know ...
, Eléonore Hirt and
Delphine Seyrig Delphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig (; 10 April 1932 – 15 October 1990) was a Lebanese-born French actress and film director. She came to prominence in Alain Resnais's 1961 film ''Last Year at Marienbad'', and later acted in films by Francois ...
.


''Beckett on Film'' (2000)

Another
film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
ed version of ''Play'' was directed by Anthony Minghella for the ''
Beckett on Film ''Beckett on Film'' was a project aimed at making film versions of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett's stage plays, with the exception of the early and unperformed ''Eleutheria''. This endeavour was successfully completed, with the first films bei ...
'' project, starring Alan Rickman,
Kristin Scott Thomas Dame Kristin Ann Scott Thomas (born 24 May 1960) is a British actress who also holds French citizenship. A five-time British Academy Film Awards, BAFTA Award and Laurence Olivier Award, Olivier Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best ...
and Juliet Stevenson. For this particular interpretation of the play, it is assumed that the action takes place in Hell, perhaps in reference to Jean-Paul Sartre's famous assertion, 'Hell is—other people' though
T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...
’s rebuttal, “Hell is oneself,” is probably more accurate. In this filmed version, the action is set in a vast landscape of "urn people", all speaking at once. “This nterpretationwas much turned over, along with doubts whether it should be there at all, in animated discussions that went on throughout the
Barbican A barbican (from fro, barbacane) is a fortified outpost or fortified gateway, such as at an outer fortifications, defense perimeter of a city or castle, or any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was used for defensive purposes. Europe ...
meeting places.” A camera is used instead of a stage light to provoke the characters into action; Minghella uses a
jump cut A jump cut is a cut (transition), cut in film editing in which a single continuous sequential shot of a subject is broken into two parts, with a piece of footage being removed in order to render the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera posit ...
editing technique to make it seem as though there are even more than two repetitions of the text. He “made the equipment into a threatening force by switching it with bullying speed from one face to another, forcing unusual speed of delivery for the actors. Juliet Stevenson told Katharine Worth ">Katharine_Worth.html" ;"title="Katharine Worth">Katharine Worth that during rehearsals she had wondered whether the lines were being delivered too fast for viewers to take in their sense [but] theatre critic, Alice Griffin … thought that the lines ‘came across more clearly and more easily understandable than sometimes in the theatre.’ This she attributed partly to Minghella's use of
close-up A close-up or closeup in filmmaking, television production, still photography, and the comic strip medium is a type of shot that tightly frames a person or object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium and long s ...
, a recurring feature of the film versions naturally enough.”Worth, K., ‘Sources of Attraction to Beckett’s Theater’ in Oppenheim, L., (Ed.) ''Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies'' (London: Palgrave, 2004), p 221 The
postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
outlook of the film ("a field of urns in a dismal
swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...
, a gnarled, blasted oak in the background, a lowering, Chernobyl sky") was however criticized by '' The Guardians
Art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...
Adrian Searle as " adolescent, and worse,
cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...
d and illustrational," adding: "Any minute, expect a
dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...
". It is also perhaps noteworthy that this version does not feature the last section of the script, in which the characters almost embark upon a third cycle of the text. See also:
''Beckett on Film''
Official site

at ''Beckett on Film'', Official site


References


External links



* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080513182322/http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num09/Num9Lawley.htm Beckett’s Dramatic Counterpoint: a Reading of ''‘Play’'' - Paul Lawleybr>DANTE… BRUNO. VICO… JOYCE By Samuel Beckett
{{Beckett 1963 plays Adultery in plays Theatre of the Absurd Plays by Samuel Beckett