Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author's fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May. "It [was] followed by six undated typescripts (numbered 0 – 4 and 'final version').”Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 130
Despite the English version being recorded first, due to delays at the BBC, the first actual broadcast was of Elmar and Erika Tophoven'sKnowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 535 German translation, He Joe, on 13 April 1966, Beckett's sixtieth birthday, by Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart; Beckett directed, his first credit as such. Deryk Mendel played Joe and Nancy Illig voiced the woman.
An American production of Eh Joe was directed by frequent Beckett collaborator Alan Schneider, produced by Glenn Jordan and broadcast by WNDT on 18 April 1966.Harmon, M., (Ed.) No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p 205
The first English broadcast went out eventually on BBC2 (4 July 1966) with Jack MacGowran, for whom the play was specifically written, playing Joe (originally 'Jack'Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 534 at the start of the first draft) and Siân Phillips as Voice. Beckett had asked for Billie Whitelaw but she was unavailable due to another acting commitment. Alan Gibson directed but with Beckett in attendance.
At least thirteen versions have been preserved on tape making it far and away Beckett's most produced teleplay.Marius Buning et al., (Eds.) Beckett Versus Beckett (Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 7) (Amsterdam:Rodopi, 1998), p 106
It was first published in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber, 1967) – although the version published is closer to Typescript 3, mentioned above, than the version as broadcast.Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 132
The characters
Joe
The play opens with Joe, a grey-haired man in his late fifties, sitting alone in an archetypal Beckettian room. He is wearing an old dressing gown and a pair of carpet slippers.
Like a young child, checking for monsters, Joe methodically goes through his room. As he does so the camera follows him...
getting up, going to window, opening window, looking out, closing window, drawing curtain, standing intent. going from window to door, opening door, looking out, closing door, locking door, drawing hanging before door, standing intent. going from door to cupboard, opening cupboard, looking in, closing cupboard, locking cupboard, drawing hanging before cupboard, standing intent. going from cupboard to bed, kneeling down looking under bed, getting up, sitting down on edge of bed as when discovered, beginning to relax.Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 201
The camera cuts to a close-up of Joe. His eyes are closed, his features relaxed. Beckett indicates that the close-up should begin with the camera one yard (1 m) from his face and dolly-in gradually throughout the piece. He indicates nine breaks where the camera is allowed to move, four inches (102 mm) closer each time. By the end of the play, the camera is close enough so that only his eyes are in frame. "The numeral nine has often been associated with death",Lamont, R., Beckett’s ‘Eh Joe: Lending an Ear to the Anima' in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp 232,233 e.g. there are nine circles in Dante's vision of Hell.
As the woman begins to speak Joe opens his eyes and his face displays a look of "intentness". He is trapped, which is how Beckett referred to the room in Film;In his notes following the second draft of Film, Beckett refers to the room as 'the trap'. – Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 131 the situation here is very similar, in fact Beckett originally had Joe on a seat just like O but decided that "a more telling image for a seducer would be alone on a bed".Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 131 The voice utters nine short speeches during which Beckett requires the actor to remain practically motionless and stare unblinkingly toward – though not directly at – the camera lens, an extraordinary demand for physical restraint to ask of any actor, though in reality there were instances where, when filming, MacGowran did close his eyes for effect (e.g. after the word “Gillette”,Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 206 he closes his eyes and his face winces in pain). Only during the short gaps, while the camera moves, can he relax his gaze momentarily. Despite these unscripted breaks MacGowran found the role "the most gruelling twenty-two minutes I have ever had in my life" but he also admits it was the only time he was "wholly pleased with this work".MacGowran, J., quoted in Levy, S., ‘Eh Joe and the Peephole Aesthetic' in Kedzierski, M., 'Beckett and the (Un)Changing Image of the Mind' in The Savage Eye / L'Oeil Fauve : New Essays on Beckett's Television Plays (Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1995) (SBT; 4), p 56 He wrote later:
"It’s really photographing the mind. It’s the nearest perfect play for television that you could come across, because the television camera photographs the mind better than anything else".'MacGowran on Beckett' in Theatre Quarterly, III, ii (July-Sept 1973), p 20
Voice
Between camera movements we hear a woman's voice addressing Joe. Beckett specifies that the voice should be as follows: "Low, distinct, remote, little colour, absolutely steady rhythm, slightly slower than normal". The tone throughout is accusatory. Nancy Illig describes the kind of delivery that resulted from her work with Beckett in 1966, as a "hammering staccato”.Nancy Illig in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 26 "The voice becomes a technical device, on a par with the dolly".Lamont, R., 'Beckett’s Eh Joe: Lending an Ear to the Anima' in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 229 In the original recording "the vocal colourlessness at which Beckett was aiming was achieved by placing a microphone right up against [the actress’s] mouth and, as her voice was being recorded, both high and low frequencies were filtered out".Clas Zilliacus, Beckett and Broadcasting, p 198 and interview with Michael Bakewell, 21 March 1994. Referred to in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 538
Billie Whitelaw, who finally got to tackle the role in 1989, recalls:
"For Eh Joe, I went over to Paris and saw Sam. We read it together. I found it unbearably moving but we read it and he kept on hitting my nose – which is neither here nor there, very sweet – and we read it through and he kept on saying as always, 'No colour, no colour' and 'slow', I mean slower than I’ve ever known him want me to go before, even slower than Footfalls: absolutely flat; absolutely on a monotone.”Knowlson, J. and E., (Eds.) Beckett Remembering: Remembering Beckett, (London: Bloomsbury, 2006) p 174
"Whitelaw [has] emphasized over and again in her workshops … the difference between playing 'character roles' and acting the Beckett roles she played with 'no colour.' Whitelaw explained how she concentrated her attention on timing, rhythm, and the musicality of texts, as well as creating an active metaphor for a role so that she could play the role with 'no colour.' She also explained how she delivered her lines as a form of ‘Chinese water torture’ so that each phrase of the text was delivered as a drop of water literally dripped into Joe's head".Zarrilli, P. B., Acting "at the nerve ends": Beckett, Blau, and the Necessary in Theatre Topics 7.2, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p 113
She remembers that Beckett mentioned "the phrase 'suppressed venom' in relation to the woman. She seems to be jealous of the other women she describes, vindictive. He also said to remember that she is weary ... I must also try to remember that she is a voice in someone else's head, a disembodied voice".Billie Whitelaw interviewed by Linda Ben-Zvi in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 7
Synopsis
Eh Joe is the complete antithesis to ... but the clouds ... in which a man strains nightly to evoke the image of a woman with little success. Like O in Film, Joe has gone through his routine, doing what he feels he needs to do to protect himself and like the man in Film he is sitting quietly thinking he is safe. But he is not. It is not a face he finds watching himself but a voice he hears, a woman's voice. As the voice progresses we move closer and closer to Joe.
To Alan Schneider, Beckett wrote on 7 April 1966: "Voice should be whispered. A dead voice in his head. Minimum of colour. Attacking. Each sentence a knife going in, pause for withdrawal, then in again."Harmon, M., (Ed.) No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p 201
36" – The voice wants to know if Joe has checked everything. Why is he still sitting there with the light on? Why doesn't he go to bed? He's changed the covers.
32" – She reminds him that he'd told her that the best was still to come but that it was the last thing he did say to her as he hurried her into her coat and bundled her out the door.
28" – She is not the first voice that has come to him like this, in his mind; although the woman hints that the source may be external. His father's voice came to him for years until Joe found a way to stop him talking, to metaphorically throttle him, then his mother and finally, others, “ the others",Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 203 everyone it seems who ever loved him.
24" – She asks if there is anyone left who might love him. He's reduced to paying for sex, once a week. She warns him to be careful he doesn't run out of people to take advantage of because then there would only be him left to adore him until he too died. She assures him that she is not in heaven and not to expect to go there himself.
20" – The woman recalls one time the two of them were together. It was summer, they were sitting together on the grass watching the ducks, holding hands and exchanging vows. He'd complimented her on her elocution and she remarks how well he used to express himself. Now, like he did with his parents and the others, he has “ her down to this",Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 204 the slow monotonous drone we hear. She knows her time is limited and wonders when all she will have left is a whisper. She lashes out at him and asks him to imagine if he never managed to rid himself of her until he died and was with her in death himself.
16"– Joe has been a religious man. She wants to know if he's as righteous as he used to profess to be. She quotes from the parable of Jesus about the rich man and says one day God will talk to him like she is doing and, when he does, it'll be time for him to die.
12" – Joe had said that the best was to come. She tells him that, for her at least, it did. She found someone far better than he was and lists off all the ways.