Dorothy
Chansky
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Bill Irwin’s “On Beckett” Shakespeare Theatre Company
Bill Irwin loves words—specifically those of Samuel Beckett. In his one-man, 80-minute tour-de-force, Irwin makes his audience love Beckett, too (if they didn’t already) while also getting us to give it up for the performer/creator’s own skills as an observer, respondent, philosopher, interpreter, rubber-limbed trickster, and raconteur. Irwin is a Ringling trained clown who has brought his physical-comedy-with-a-POV skills to Broadway, for instance in “Fool Moon.” (His baggy-pants work is more Lear’s Fool than it is Claribelle or Bozo.) He is a fine character actor, at ease in musical or non-musical contexts. (He played Cap’n Andy in the San Francisco Opera’s 2014 production of “Show Boat,” perhaps reminding audiences why the original Cap’n Andy—1927’s Charles Winninger—received top billing and made such a splash with his carefully crafted shtick.) Irwin has also performed in work by Brecht, Shakespeare, and Albee. Recently he joined Jessica Hecht on Broadway in the cast of Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” which satirized “crunchy” California liberals debating the merits of personal choice regarding vaccination in the face of a virus breakout in a private school. (The play won Broadway’s 2025 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, having previously run in both a smaller U.S. production and a London engagement.) Irwin is well-known for his work in Beckett’s oeuvre, especially several productions of “Waiting for Godot,” in which he has played both Vladimir and Lucky. This is a short list. Irwin’s strategy in “On Beckett” is to alternate between performances of parts of Beckett texts—four of them—and his own musings on those texts, on being an actor, on being a clown, and on being now close to seventy-six. Memorization, Irwin asserts, is where one feels language most acutely. Hence the value of an actor’s perspective on words that might otherwise, if encountered casually (or even diligently) on the page, yield confusion or despair—head scratching or just throwing one’s hands up. When the body and repetition come into play, worlds open up. Irwin knows that Beckett’s name is now a kind of catchword for despair but he assures us that the writer was anything but an austere philosopher interested in bleakness. Beckett’s work is always about human life, he tells us, and much of it deals with finding ways out of hell. Irwin believes that in the realm of dealing with despondency, Beckett can go toe to toe with Dante, Milton, Emily Dickinson, or Sylvia Plath and that the throughline in the author’s work is “to begin.” Before getting to “Waiting for Godot” (with a hilarious discourse on whether the eponymous no-show guy’s name should have the accent on the first or the second syllable), Irwin inhabits words from “Texts for Nothing,” “The Unnamable,” and “Watt.” When Irwin tells us that Beckett’s language operates the way consciousness operates, he suggests that there’s always a lot rattling around simultaneously, and that linearity may not be all it’s cracked up to be. For Bill Irwin, Beckett is a writer full of desire whose work is all about how to survive. A recent production by Mabou Mines of Beckett’s radio play “All That Fall” used a built environment to “tell a story” via buildings, trains, and a river, using miniatures and light to illustrate what might otherwise have been opaque to a listening-only audience. Irwin’s metier is to inhabit the texts, bringing them to life via embodiment rather than illustration (much less explanation). His is neither the only way, nor even necessarily the best, to embrace SB’s work, but it is his (Irwin’s), and it is arresting. Godot. Of course we are treated to an excerpt from Lucky’s speech. But Irwin also uses Lucky’s situation to show how seemingly hapless have-nots (Vladimir and Estragon) adopt the stance of the powerful bully (Pozzo) and do his bidding rather than allying themselves with a fellow sufferer (Lucky). Not a political play? Irwin begs to differ. There’s more, but you get the idea. Language is potent and
mysterious, and it can stretch to fit its user in many different
ways. The trick is to be, or, in this case to find, a skillful,
experienced, dedicated user.
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