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Reviewed by:
  • Fragments
  • Jennifer D. Douglas
Fragments. By Samuel Beckett. Directed by Peter Brook. Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Chicago. 1 February 2008.

Amidst the carnivalesque atmosphere of Chicago’s Navy Pier, replete with kiosks selling cotton candy and saltwater taffy and an Irish souvenir shop stocked with clover-covered trinkets, Peter Brook’s production of Beckett short pieces contained the tragic and comic reversals of carnival. Fragments brought together five short pieces: Rough for Theatre I, Act Without Words II, Rockaby, Come and Go, and the poem “Neither.” By balancing the physical, clown-like humor of Act without Words II with the stark isolation of Rockaby, Fragments focused on the tension between loneliness and flawed company. The ebb and flow of humor and sadness in these plays echoed the comic incongruity of the black-box theatre overlooking a giant Ferris wheel. Brook’s choice of staging likewise moved between mime and meditation, from physical farce to earnest seeking. His decision to change some of the original stage directions in several places, particularly in Rockaby, evoked the controversial production history of Beckett’s work. Although these changes did not go so far as to alter the setting, they risked disturbing the stillness and tight choreography of the characters’ movements. Brook’s liberties, however, created a link between the stilted interactions in Rough, Act, and Come and the isolated introspection of Rockaby and “Neither.”

Rough for Theatre I explored the potential relationship between two physically disabled people, A and B, and how their mutual mistrust and B’s selfishness thwarts that relationship. The performance situated tightly controlled movements and dialog alongside moments of emotional or physical release. Marcello Magni as the blind A continuously swept one leg in front of him, similar to the motion of a blind person’s walking stick. In moments of desperation, as after B (Jos Houben) struck him, his rapid sweeping motion across the stage emphasized that both of them are lost: physically hindered and emotionally scarred. After short-lived contentment together, B panicked over the potential friendship he had initiated and taunted A by threatening to take away his violin. Unlike Beckett’s stage directions, in this production B wheeled himself to the violin and began plucking the strings to show that he was in control and could leave A even more destitute without his instrument, his only means of support. This staging choice seemed in keeping with Beckett’s depictions of couples who cannot bear to be together, but cannot part. The play’s enigmatic ending left A acting in self-defense: after B’s threat to take the violin, A found B’s pole and wrenched it from him. In a final tableau, A held the pole over his head in striking posture while the lights faded to red. Despite their potential connection and helpfulness to the other, the two became adversaries forced to continue their solitary existence. Although their antics evoked laughter, their impending isolation prepared the way for the woman’s monologue in Rockaby.

Brook’s staging of Rockaby diverged the most from the original text, but allowed Kathryn Hunter the freedom to use her body in ways that resonated with the miming in the other plays. At the same time, this freedom of movement diminished the interiority and stillness of the monologue at some points. Contrary to Beckett’s stage directions, the production did not use a recorded voice, V, to deliver [End Page 465] most of the monologue; instead, Hunter delivered it live, the speech emanating from her gravelly yet sonorous voice. Although this choice diminished the sense of dialogue or call and response, Hunter’s delivery was rich enough that the recording seemed unnecessary. In place of the lines that would have doubled live and recorded voice—namely, “time she stopped”—Hunter developed a phrasing that differentiated the first instance of the line from its repetition. For example, she paused after “time she stopped” and then phrased the next two lines together, “time she stopped / going to and fro.”

The staging also differed from Beckett’s instructions in that Brook used a straight-back dining room chair instead of a rocking chair. This substitution altered the play considerably, since the...

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