Where, oh where was Bill Irwin back when I was doodling through my first college lecture on the Theater of the Absurd?
This is what I found myself wondering last weekend, while enjoying a preview performance of “On Beckett,” the new, roughly 85-minute work conceived and performed by Irwin, the veteran actor, director, writer and clown, now in its premiere at Irish Repertory Theatre. Dipping into Samuel Beckett’s work outside drama—including, prominently, the short prose collection “Texts For Nothing,” which Irwin previously adapted into a stage piece—while also dedicating a substantial chunk of time to Waiting For Godot, the multi-tasking Irish-American artist offers an homage to his visionary idol that is both deeply personal and defiantly, even exuberantly accessible.
Irwin claims to have no professorial pretensions here. “Mine is an actor’s relationship to (Beckett’s) language,” he insists early on, and “also a clown’s relationship to it.” Certainly, his talents in the latter capacity contribute greatly to the energy and humor abundant in On Beckett. Charlie Corcoran’s set is essentially two large, rectangular boxes from which Irwin keeps pulling sartorial props: baggy pants and jackets, clown shoes and glasses and a succession of hats—mostly bowlers, of course. Irwin’s fluid, witty physicality and evocative facial expressions lend character and color to all his readings, not to mention a brief, hilarious dance segment.
But Beckett’s words are Irwin’s primary tools, and the focus of his enduring obsession. “It’s an Irish voice, and the language is immediate,” Irwin notes— though “he wrote it all in French.” Throughout the show, the entertainer peppers his passionate, insightful, intensely researched observations about that language with lines crafted to playfully pierce through any air of pomposity. “I’ve heard it debated: Was Beckett a writer of the body, or the intellect?” he asks, then answers himself: “Smells like a question you could waste a lot of time on.”
What On Beckett makes clear is the inextricable link between the verbal and the corporeal in much of its subject’s work, a connection that is perfectly suited to Irwin’s distinct and varied gifts. Noting the variety of Beckett’s influences, Irwin interprets passages from “Texts” and the novels Watt and The Unnamable with nods to James Joyce, vaudeville and the silent film era. Vivid in their specific detail, the different readings also reflect the universality of Beckett’s sharp, bleak take on the human condition, and the transcendent beauty with which he expressed it.
The Godot portion is still, predictably, the juiciest, with Irwin—whose long association with the play includes a Broadway production in which he co-starred with Nathan Lane, as well as a featured role in the Mike Nichols-directed Lincoln Center staging that paired Steve Martin and the late Robin Williams—revisiting the roles of Vladimir and Lucky at key junctures in the play. For Lucky’s monologue—“the most full-out clown scene—the most visceral—in all of Beckett’s plays—maybe in 20th century playwriting,” we are forewarned—Irwin piles on the gear, and recreates that breathtaking moment when Lucky finally finds his voice, and the uproarious, wrenching consequences. (“I remember seeing Robin Williams flying at me,” Irwin recalls.)
In the other Godot segment, Irwin is joined by the winsome young actor Finn O’Sullivan, playing the boy who appears towards the end of both acts. After performing the scene, in which Vladimir desperately interrogates the child, Irwin calls O’Sullivan—whose program bio tells us he is “currently applying to high schools”—back onstage, and asks if he’s sure he wants to be actor. Winking back at the dialogue, the younger player replies, “Yes, sir.” If the lad can parlay that enthusiasm with as much dexterity and sheer joy as Irwin brings us here, we’ll all be the luckier.
On Beckett opened October 3, 2018, at the Irish Repertory Theatre and runs through November 4. Tickets and information: irishrep.org
