AND HE DOES
In the 1980s, Barry McGovern and Gerry Dukes collaborated to cut three novels by Samuel Beckett (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) into a few monologues, divided by lighting cues (James McConnell) and set changes (Robert Ballagh) and an intermission, called I’ll Go On. Though spoken by different characters in their original form, in this theater piece they may as well be the same man. Barry McGovern plays the man.
The piece was first performed at Dublin’s Gate Theatre, and the production now running at the Kirk Douglas is a Gate Theatre production. It’s not a play; there is not much drama in it; in many ways though it’s fairly typical Beckett: a dirty old man reflects with perverse optimism upon a life of dissolution and disappointment. Its poetry is hard and beautiful. It is often very funny and sometimes brutal. It speaks more eloquently, more truly of the human condition than the combined hours I lived last week. It is full of hope and wisdom. It is performed by a fine actor, written by a great writer, directed with simplicity and grace by Colm Ó Briain, to the single end of making your life more tolerable and meaningful.
Your day may be a sorry slog of fear, but should your feet lead you to this show, it will become a better day. You will hear words not always comforting but always true, and truth recognized is a joy – even unpleasant truth; even fatal truth. Especially fatal truth. You may be greater than this life you live, and you may not; you may not know how to increase your value to yourself. This show will almost certainly bring you closer to that reckoning whereby you rise beyond the flesh and realize the potential that is your duty.
photos by Craig Schwartz
I’ll Go On
Gate Theatre of Dublin
Center Theatre Group
Kirk Douglas Theatre
9820 Washington Blvd. in Culver City
scheduled to end on February 9, 2014
for tickets, call (213) 628-2772
or visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org