Gare St Lazare Players Ireland, Ireland’s most travelled theatre company, make a return visit to Edinburgh to perform their signature work, The Beckett Trilogy on 21st & 22nd January at 7.30pm at The Traverse Theatre.
The work is a distillation of three novels:- Molloy, Malone Dies & The Unnamable. Samuel Beckett referred to his prose writings as the ‘important work’ and for over a decade actor Conor Lovett and director Judy Hegarty Lovett have been bringing these works to the stage. The visit to Edinburgh is supported by Culture Ireland.
Lovett is internationally regarded as among the foremost Beckett actors and has performed in over 70 cities outside of his native Ireland. In the UK the company have performed at The Royal National Theatre, Riverside Studios and Battersea Arts centre in London as well as Oxford Playhouse, Brighton Pavilion and The Tobacco Factory in Bristol, and of course at Pleasance in Edinburgh. Their repertory now includes over 10 of Beckett’s prose works.
The Beckett Trilogy is seen by many, including his publisher, John Calder, as Beckett’s masterpiece. The first book, Molloy, tells of the crippled, tramp narrator’s journey to try and find his mother. In Malone Dies, the dying narrator tells himself stories as he waits in his deathbed and in The Unnamable the protagonist dispenses altogether with story and it is here that Beckett brought the novel to its next step and where very few have followed him.
Gare St Lazare Players have succeeded in highlighting all of Beckett’s signature humanity, humour and compassion in a highly theatrical production that has proven itself over and over again internationally. It is a perfect introduction to Beckett’s prose and those who are already familiar will need no prompting with this opportunity to savour Beckett at the hands of a team that have made the rendition of his writing a labour of love.
You will have to love Beckett to go to this show – the running time is approximately 3 hours 30 minutes with intervals.
Tickets: £16 (£12 concessions) Booking on The Traverse website
Just to give you a taster, here is a video of Gare St Lazare Players Ireland in Beckett’s First Love
First Love Promo from International Festival of Arts & on Vimeo.
