Ends and Odds

Exciting news via the Daily Telegraph, of a forthcoming production of All That Fall at the Jermyn Street Theatre from 9 October to 3 November. The production will be directed by Trevor Nunn and star Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon. A rare treat for those fans of genre-bending, with or without official authorial or estate consent, the play was, of course, written in English for the BBC Third Programme in 1956.

Intriguingly vague, the Telegraph describes the condition upon which permission was granted as "based on the understanding that it will be performed as a radio show."

Nunn hints at a little more:

"For many years I have been hoping to present Samuel Beckett’s extraordinary radio play 'All That Fall' on stage. The Jermyn Street Theatre is the perfect intimate space for this unique project, as I attempt to recreate the studio circumstances for which the play was written. Most excitingly, this rare staging of a little known Beckett masterpiece has attracted the involvement of two world famous actors, Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon, to play the leading parts of Mrs and Mr Rooney.

Richly showing Beckett’s connection to O’Casey, the play moves through comedic situations to a conclusion as disturbingly bleak as anything in his writing. My hope is that audiences won’t try to find and read the play beforehand, but come to it as if it is a new work about which they know almost nothing. The impact of this play will then be at its most devasting"

Further details, and tickets, are available here.