Gate / Beckett

Dublin’s renowned Gate Theatre performs three one-man dramas by Samuel Beckett as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, none of them originally written for the stage. These compelling works expose the intricate human condition that the Nobel Prize-winning author Beckett so deeply mined.

Eh Joe
Beckett’s Eh Joe, originally written for television and adapted for the Gate’s stage by distinguished Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, is stunning in its ability to capture the richness of Beckett’s minimalism without a word from the main character. Joe, played by celebrated Irish-born actor Liam Neeson, sits alone in a room, prodded into uncomfortable thought by Penelope Wilton’s disembodied voice. A projected close-up of his face is all the tortured expression the audience needs to understand the pain of a memory explored.

I’ll Go On
Ireland’s most celebrated Beckett interpreter, the inimitable Barry McGovern, delivers the soul of three Beckett characters through monologue in I’ll Go On, a distillation of the playwright’s post-war novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. This astonishing production, directed by Colm O’Briain, takes its name from the final line of The Unnamable: "I can’t go on, I’ll go on."

First Love
Acclaimed British actor Ralph Fiennes appears in First Love, Beckett’s disturbing reverie on loss. First Love tells the story of a man made homeless in the wake of his father’s death who becomes reluctantly involved with a woman he meets on a park bench in this harsh glimpse of what love might have been.