The UK's Channel 4 - which thankfully at time of writing remains unscathed from the depredations of Conservative governments, despite the best (?) efforts of the spectacularly dim Nadine Dorries (how did that creature ever hold a remit that put her in charge of the country's culture?) to destroy it for her petty ideological reasons despite not understanding how it's funded - provided me with a lot of educational entertainment in my life, especially in the late '90s and early '00s. No, I don't mean hungover university Sunday mornings watching Alexa Chung and Miquita Oliver introduce Hollyoaks through a foggy haze - well, that as well - I'm talking about things like the Eurotika! strand that introduced me to such fun as Jess Franco's Female Vampire (if anyone wants to know my thoughts on that gem, I think I did a review on We Are Cult), as well as slightly less prurient but just as great stuff like the Beckett on Film season - a well worthwhile collaboration between Channel 4 and the Irish Film Board.
It was timely, as I was at the time just familiarising myself with the works of Samuel Beckett (who, lest we forget, never made the leap home) through performing, if that's not too strong a word, in Waiting for Godot on my university drama course. I can't in all conscience say it was any good, but since we'd convinced the proprietors of the nearest pub to the theatre to let us perform it in there - I think some guff about "placing and spacing" was invoked - it was at least amusing as most of the small cast got progressively smashed on Harp and Guinness between scenes. Durty Nelly's is a nice looking hotel now. I hope they got rid of the smell of vomit.
Anyway: just as I was plunged into the works of aforesaid Irish wordsmith, this season of the works of Beckett committed to celluloid became a thing that was happening. The one that I clearly recall sitting down to watch was the brief (under seven minutes) piece 'Catastrophe'.
Our mise-en-scene is a theatre, in which an officious Director (the legendary Harold Pinter, who despite the rumours was not in the Doctor Who story 'The Abominable Snowmen' - though his The Caretaker was obviously far superior to that of Gareth bloody Roberts) barks orders to his Assistant (the lovely and talented Rebecca Pidgeon, no relation to either Forbidden Planet star and gas station blowjob aficionado Walter or to occasional 1970s Doctor Who guest star Frances, but married to playwright and director David Mamet - helmer of this piece. She's in most of his stuff, before anyone cries nepotism. Bloody good singer, too: her rendition of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?' is my second favourite Beach Boys cover; only because Frank Black's 'Hang On To Your Ego' cannot be beaten) to continually rearrange the placing and spacing of the living art installation that stands upon the stage. This is the Protagonist (legend of stage and screen [and Chelsea public conveniences, being fined £10 in 1953 for "persistent importuning" during the bad old days when men who loved men had to conceal their sexuality in the twilight world of toilet trading. One hopes it was a tenner well spent - most people only spent a penny] Sir John Gielgud himself, star of Caligula and Arthur 2: On the Rocks and other stuff, in his final role - dying mere weeks later), an elderly and infirm silent man who remains immobile with his eyes downcast as the Assistant continually adjusts his clothing, posture and stance upon the podium he occupies on the barked orders of the impatient Director who informs us that he has a caucus to attend.
"Sure he won't utter?" asks the Assistant.
"Not a squeak." growls the Director, certain that he has a submissive and acquiescent spectacle for whatever audience is to arrive.
After ordering the indignities of having the old man stripped down to his underclothes and continually posed like a mannequin, the tyrannical Director commands the the flesh be bleached before instructing the unseen Luke (a lighting assistant who - Godot-like - never appears) to show "just the head".
Luke drops the lights and lights only the old man's head on command, at which point the Assistant hesitantly dares to venture a suggestion of her own:
"What if we were to raise the head - just for an instant? To show the face? Just for an instant?"
"Raise his head?" roars the Director. "What next? Where do you think we are - Patagonia?!? 'Raise his head'... For God's sake. No, that's our catastrophe in the bag."
And in the darkness, the Protagonist - silent and unprotesting until now - shifts from the cowed and bowed position into which he has been manipulated by slowly lifting his head and defiantly meeting our gaze.
Beckett - Pinter - Mamet: a trifecta of titans of theatre; the Holy Trinity of 20th century drama, perhaps.
And perhaps in these current times of the U.K. Conservative government giving increasingly dictatorial edicts and clamping down on such basic rights as the simple freedom to protest, it behoves us to take the message of Gielgud's enfeebled but unbowed Protagonist and defiantly raise our heads into the light and look our oppressors in the eye now and then.
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