Play is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German as Spiel on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic in London. It was not well-received upon its British premiere.
Synopsis The curtain rises on three identical grey funeral "urns",Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 443 about three feet tall by preference,Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 159 arranged in a row facing the audience. They contain three stock characters. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his mistress (W2). Their "[f]aces [are] so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 147 Beckett had used similar imagery before, Mahood's jar in The Unnameable, for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in Endgame.
At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus"; the effect is unintelligible. The main part of this play is made up of short, occasionally fragmented sentences spoken in a "[r]apid tempo throughout" "which in his 1978 rehearsals [he] likened to a lawn mower – a burst of energy followed by a pause, a renewed burst followed by another pause."Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 445 "He wrote each part separately, then interspersed them, working over the proper breaks in the speeches for a long time before he was satisfied."Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p. 582
One character speaks at a time and only when a strong spotlight shines in his or her face. The style is reminiscent of Mouth's logorrhoea in Not I, the obvious difference being that these characters constantly use first person pronouns. Clichés and puns abound. While one is talking the other two are silent and in darkness. They neither acknowledge the existence of the others around them (M: "To think we were never together"Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 156) nor appear aware of anything outside their own being and past (W2: "At the same time I prefer this to . . . the other thing. Definitely. There are endurable moments"Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 152). Beckett writes that this spotlight "provokes" the character's speech, and insists that whenever possible, a single, swivelling light should be used, rather than separate lights switching on and off. In this manner the spotlight is "expressive of a unique inquisitor".Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 158 Billie Whitelaw referred to it as "an instrument of torture."From an unscripted interview with Billie Whitelaw by James Knowlson. A television recording made on 1 February 1977 for the University of London Audio-Visual Centre. The spotlight is in effect the play's fourth character.
In an almost fugal style the three obsess over the affair. Each presents his or her own version of the truth told in the past tense and each from his or her respective points of view. It is one of Beckett's most 'musical' pieces with "a chorus for three voices, orchestration, stage directions concerning tempo, volume and tone, a da capoIn Proust, Beckett refers to "the beautiful convention of 'da capo' ... a testimony to the intimate and ineffable nature of an art that is perfectly intelligible and perfectly inexplicable." – Proust, (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931), p. 15 repeat of the entire action" and a short coda.
Towards the end of the script, there is the concise instruction: "Repeat play."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 157 Beckett elaborates on this in the notes, by saying that the repeat might be varied. "[I]n the London production, variations were introduced: a weakening of light and voices in the first repeat, and more so in the second; an abridged second opening; increasing breathlessness; changes in the order of the opening words." The purpose of this is to suggest a gradual winding down of the action for he writes of "the impression of falling off which this would give, with the suggestion of a conceivable dark and silence in the end, or of an indefinite approximating towards it."Knowlson, J., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett: an Exhibition (London: Turret Books, 1971), p. 92 At the end of this second repeat, the play appears as if it is about to start again for a third time (as in Act Without Words II), but does not get more than a few seconds into it before it suddenly stops.
The affair
"The affair was unexceptional. From the moment when the man tried to escape his tired marriage and odious professional commitments by taking a mistress, [events took a predictable enough course:] the wife soon began to ‘smell her off him’;Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 151 there were painful recriminations when the wife accused the man, hired a private detective, threatened to kill herself, and confronted the mistress in an old rambling house reminiscent of Watt (and where the servant again is 'Erskine'Beckett, S., Watt (London: John Calder 1998), p. 55) ... The man renounced the mistress, was forgiven by his wife who 'suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the Riviera or ... Grand Canary,'Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 150 and then, [true to form], returned to the mistress, this time to elope with her. [In time] their relationship too became jaded, and the man"Robinson, M., The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p. 296 abandons her as well.
According to Knowlson and John Pilling in Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett, “"[T]he three figures in Play … are not three-dimensional characters. Any attempt to analyse them as if they were would be absurd. The stereotype predominates … [They] belong … to the artificial world of melodrama and romance embodied in romanticized fiction."Knowlson, J. and Pilling, J., Frescoes of the Skull (London: John Calder, 1979), p. 115
Biographical references
During the late 1950s when staying in London, Beckett often met with Barbara Bray, at the time a script-editor with the BBC. A small and attractive widow in her thirties, she was also intelligent and well read. “Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted to her and she to him. Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of a relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with of [his long-time partner] Suzanne, for the rest of his life.”Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 458, 459 In short time their association became “a very intimate and personal one.”Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 495
“In a visit to Paris in January 1961, Barbara ... informed Beckett that she intended to move [there] to live permanently”Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 480 “a move which had been discussed more than once with Sam.”Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 500 His response was unusual. In March he married Suzanne in a civil ceremony in the seaside town of Folkestone, England. Ostensibly this was to ensure if he died before her Suzanne would “inherit the rights to his work, since, under French law, there was no ‘common-law wife’ legislation … Or he may simply have wanted to affirm where his true loyalty lay. Whatever the reason, the marriage made it clear … that he was unwilling to leave the woman with whom he had already lived for more than twenty years.”
For all that, in June 1961 Bray still decided to move and despite his recent marriage “[a]lmost every day [he went] round, often spending a good part of the day or a large part of the evening there.” “Oddly enough, this side of his life was [not well] known about in Paris ... [Beckett’s] natural reserve and well-developed sense of decorum were allied to his fear of giving offence to Suzanne.”Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), pp 517,518 Anthony Cronin notes that strangely – or perhaps not so strangely – during this time he was often to be found talking “fervently and seriously about suicide.”Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 519 Despite his unwillingness to do much about it he was clearly suffering badly from guilt.
To comply with the law, Beckett “was obliged to be in residence in Folkestone for a minimum of two weeks to allow him to be married in the Registry Office there”Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 481 and this time spent there observing the locals may well have influenced the “middle class, English, ‘Home Counties’” setting of Play and his use in the play of the names of “Ash and Snodland” which are both the names of towns in Kent, although James Knowlson points to two visits to Sweetwater at about the same time.Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 497
It was during the first London production that he encountered Billie Whitelaw for the first time. “Whitelaw’s deep brooding voice caught so many inflections that Beckett found himself at times listening to her instead of rehearsing the play.”Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 603
Reception In 1998, David Benedict of The Independent argued that Play is a "finer, more dramatically distilled" work than Waiting for Godot (1953).
Interpretations “The earliest version (April 1962) was written for a woman and two men, Syke and Conk, figures in white boxes. In the final version we are presented instead with, as Michael Robinson describes it in The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett, “the three corners of love’s eternal triangle (the emphasis here is on the eternal) … They have no names [now], simply the designations M, W1 and W2 which aim at anonymity but also stand for all men and women who have, like them, been caught up in a three-part love affair,”Robinson, M., The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p 295