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Speechless Gambon Reprises Eh Joe in LondonDate: 30 May 2006
Michael Gambon (pictured) is now confirmed to recreate his role in the world premiere stage adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s 1960s TV drama Eh Joe at the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre (See News, 25 May 2006). The 30-minute piece - in which Gambon never speaks - will run for 30 performances only, twice nightly from 29 June (previews from 27 June) until 15 July 2006.
Eh Joe has been adapted for the stage by screen director Atom Egoyan, who directed the TV version of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape with John Hurt in 2000. Beckett wrote the TV original for actor Jack MacGowran who first performed it on the BBC in 1966. In it, a disembodied voice addresses a monologue to Joe, otherwise alone in a sealed room. The voice reminds Joe of a past love affair that ended tragically because Joe drove the woman to suicide.
On television, a single camera moved from a long shot to a close-up of Joe's face. In the theatre, Egoyan positions a camera in the wings, letting it slowly move onto Gambon’s face, which is projected onto a screen on the stage. According to the show’s promotional material, “As he (Joe/Gambon) wordlessly contemplates the voice's accusations, the entire wave of human emotion is captured on camera. The astonishing visual image and the voice's spoken word entwine together in a mesmerising farewell to life.”
Gambon plays Joe, with Penelope Wilton providing the narrative: Gambon does not speak, Wilton is never seen. The two created the roles last month in Dublin, where Eh Joe was first staged as part of the six-week Beckett Centenary Festival run simultaneously at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and the Barbican Centre in London. Gambon and Wilton last collaborated in the West End on another Gate Theatre-led project, a rehearsed reading of Harold Pinter’s Celebration, which ran for three nights only in December to mark Pinter’s 75th birthday (See News, 18 Nov 2005).
For Gambon’s last full-fledged West End production, he starred with Lee Evans in Matthew Warchus’ 2004 revival of Beckett’s Endgame at the Duke of York’s. Last year, he played Falstaff in Henry IV at the National.
Currently at the Duke of York’s, Embers, the new Christopher Hampton play starring Jeremy Irons, is due to finish its extended season on 24 June 2006. Eh Joe will be succeeded by Trevor Nunn’s world premiere production of Tom Stoppard’s Rock 'n' Roll, starring Rufus Sewell, Brian Cox and Sinead Cusack. The latter moves to the West End playhouse from 22 July 2006 after its initial dates in Sloane Square as part of the Royal Court’s 50th anniversary season (See News, 18 Apr 2006).
- by Terri Paddock
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