What Where (1/2)

Seems like there is a slight "Library of Babel" influence on this interpretation.

Damn. I read that story like thirty years ago when I was a kid and forgot all about it. Damn.

i love beckett'swork, but did beckett ever write something that was not stripped down to the basic elements, although i do find it engrossing and refreshing ,you could in a way see these plays as exercises for something vast he would one day undertake that pulled in a multitude of elements, Did he ever write anything with a , dare i say it "plotline conventional" . I do see his works as full bodied but did he write anything on a more sweeping, encompassing view, "panoramic" view of life?

I can't pretend to have the slightest idea what Beckett might have written. I do mainly like his longer, more developed plays. Don't care for most of the short ones (this one being an exception obviously). I think all his plays have a sweeping, "panoramic" view of life, especially godot. He just achieves this with very little action or dialog. I can't imagine him writing any other way. I don't think he'd ever want to.

well done. Nice material from the great master.

you fall into the trap,you just got put yourself into Sam; I don't like the visuals herein, they distort Beckett, somebody should have caught this;It's really predictable stuff,Matrix, Alien stuff,also the voices should be more natural, so the timbre of their voices are not electronified;the thread of humanism in Beckett is the variations which the voice(s) inhabit, if you mess with that, well you got problems;

I disagree. As a theatrical designer, I think that the futuristic set and obvious influences in dystopia are an extension of the investigation into humanism and how far it can and will go that Beckett is exploring in What Where. I think this performance is an absolutely fantastic take on the script and adds a whole new dimension to the channels of communication. Too much these days is said about being 'too matrixy' or 'too Bladerunner', just because a believable dystopia is created.

this is great stuff, but I was disturbed by the visuals - the original theatre version specified that the stage should remain empty, and here we have this weird futuristic freaky surrounding... o.O

This is one of the better ones from this Channel 4 series. Some of them are so overdone that Beckett's absurdism becomes campy and MTVish.

Who is who, where, by whom, I, him, the outher I, himself, not I, not him or nothing related with this... Brave work, absurd, but as you say only with the improvement in sets, ambients and all of that that he spread, grain by grain to our simples requests to experiment being in the void. Ok, absurd.