During the month of April there really is one only one show in town, and that is the Beckett Centenary Festival.

In fact, it is a phenomenal and truly epic achievement for the Beckett Centenary Council, which was set up by John O’Donoghue and chaired by Philip Furlong, and for the Beckett Centenary Festival committee chaired by Michael Colgan, Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre.
Colgan, of course, is an old friend of Hot Press and at the launch of the last Beckett Festival in 2001 publicly praised “the insights into Samuel Beckett” given by three interviewees – Bono, John Hurt and Enda Hughes – in a Beckett special we did. Maybe later I’ll reprise one of those quotes but first, readers now surely will need help to negotiate the maze of Beckett events, taking place in some cases even beyond April.
Chief among these are the productions of Beckett’s plays, the bulk of which will be staged at the Gate starting tonight, April 6 with Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu, directed by Loveday Ingram and Nick Dunning respectively.
It is worth noting that the opening is at 6pm, and this will be followed this evening at 8.30 by Endgame, directed by Charles Sturridge. It also is worth noting that the first double-bill of plays gets only four performances, and the latter only 10.
Similarly the new stage adaptation of the TV play Eh Joe, directed by Atom Egoyan and starring Michael Gambon, that opens on April 12th at 6pm, gets only five performances.
A week later Robin LeFevre directs Krapp’s Last Tape, starring John Hurt and that, too, gets only seven performances.
Two days later, Footfalls, directed by Alan Gilsenan, and Come and Go, directed by Annie Ryan, opens for the first of four performance and is followed by arguably Beckett’s masterpiece and no doubt best known play, Waiting for Godot, directed by Walter Asmus and with a stellar cast of Irish actors: Stephen Brennan, Barry McGovern, Johnny Murphy and Alan Stanford. A day later, there opens (for four performances only) the double bill of Play and Catastrophe, with the former directed by Michael Caven and starring Ingrid Cragie and Nick Dunning, and the latter directed by Selina Cartmell and starring Owen Roe. See what I mean about the event being epic?
But The Gate isn’t the only venue staging the master’s works. Beckett’s Ghosts is the umbrella title for four of Beckett’s later plays, and it even opens at the Project Arts Centre on April 13, the day that would have been the 100th birthday of Beckett. The plays are A Piece of Monologue, directed by Gavin Quinn, That Time, directed by Jimmy Fay, Breath, directed by Amanda Coogan and Not I, directed by Jason Byrne. All are staged by that great alternative theatre company Bedrock.
But that’s not all. RTE Radio 1, in association with the Gare St Lazare theatre company, will broadcast Beckett’s seven radio plays, Rough For Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Words and Music, All That Fall, Cascando, The Old Tune and Embers every evening next week from Monday to Saturday at 7.02 PM and on Sunday 16 April at 8.02 pm. RTE television meanwhile will broadcast programmes such as Sean O Mordha’s magnificent documentary on Beckett, Silence to Silence.
As for the other events, they include: The Beckett Centenary Symposium at Trinity, Dublin City Public presenting an exhibition focusing on Beckett’s life, The Irish Film Institute screening films and documentaries, plus various art exhibitions, installations and concerts. But let’s end with a quote from Bono on Waiting for Godot, which some would say depicts a Godless universe; a concept that leaves Bono the well-known believer cold. Not so.
“It doesn’t because a lot of my friends are atheists,” he said. “It’s the big question, isn’t it? If there is a God, it’s serious; if there’s not a God it’s more serious and Beckett did, at least, approach that question and this to me, is the essence of his work. But let’s not forget that people like Beckett came out of an age where something didn’t exist unless you could prove it existed. You can’t tell that to a musician! That’s not how we live. And I think all artists are going to bump up against that big question in their work because they live off faith. You hear a note but have to have the faith that you will hear the next one.”