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Im not a Beckett scholar, he assures us early on, Nor am I a Beckett biographer.
Mine is an actors relationship with this language.
With candor and poignancy, Irwin pulls back the curtain on the process of performing Becketts famously difficult texts.
Infinitely expressive body, bowler hat, and baggy pants are his primary tools.
With them, he cracks Beckett open and invites us to step inside.
While not a play per se,On Beckettis a delicious piece of theater.
Nevertheless, Becketts language haunts [him].
Why cant he get Beckett out of his head?
Becketts pronouns, Irwin notes, are charged and slippery.
As he slides between persons and tenses, is he recording an argument between people or within one head?
Ah yes, says the speaker of No.
Answering them isnt the point.
Theyre simply tiny keys into different rooms of an infinite house.
Donning baggier pants and bigger shoes might make something come alive.
He was a writer acutely attuned tosilhouette, Irwin argues.
[He] was born in 1906 first generation to come of age with the motion picture.
Irwin transforms as he speaks, dropping into a pose of heavy, hilarious haplessness.
Working from the body, the performer finds the clown inside the writer.
Of course, Irwin is also sharp, sensitive actor.
Its a stark, exhausting performance equal parts incisive textual analysis and pure sweat.
And like all ofOn Beckett, its also deeply funny.
Its the paradox of a great clown: The material is ancient, the virtuosity forever young.
It seems to me that theyd find a maze suddenly turned into a playground.
They might find much easier, much more exhilarating, that great, intimidating Beckettian task: to begin.
On Beckettis at the Irish Rep through November 4.
