afterburner presents Samuel Beckett’s Company
Wednesday, April 2 — Allen Hall Theatre
Review by BRENDA HARWOOD
A man alone in the dark imagines he is not a man alone in the dark. For company.
This simple premise is at the heart of Samuel Beckett’s extraordinary novella, Company, given life on stage by Dunedin actor Simon O’Connor in a tour-de-force performance.
Standing barefoot in a bare space, in dim and shifting light created through subtle lighting design by Martyn Roberts, O’Connor embodies the unnamed protagonist as he sifts through memories and random thoughts — for company.
An eerie, shifting soundscape by Kerian Varaine — at times sounding like the wind and at others like dimly heard voices — provides an unsettling undertone to his musings.
O’Connor, along with directors Richard Huber and Stuart Young, Roberts and Varaine, first presented Company at last year’s Fringe Festival, and it won the best actor award for O’Connor at the Ōtepoti Dunedin Theatre Awards.
This return season delves even further into Beckett’s strange, philosophical piece, following its twists and turns as the man moves from confusion to memory, joy to sadness, and on to resignation.
Who is he? What is his fate? Joining him in the dark, the audience can only guess while experiencing his seemingly random thoughts and queries — sometimes funny and at other times quite bleak.
The result is intriguing, strange and quite baffling and, given the non-linear twists and turns of Beckett’s writing, leaves the viewer lost in admiration for O’Connor’s extraordinary feat of memory in performing the piece. Highly recommended.
Company returns for one more performance tonight (Thursday, April 3), from 7pm at Allen Hall Theatre.
Moody musings . . . Simon O’Connor embodies a man alone in Samuel Beckett's novella in Company. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
