All That Fall review, Arts Theatre

The Atkins Duet

All That Fall is a radio play written by Samuel Beckett in 1957 and produced on the BBC's Third Programme. Trevor Nunn has revived it as a play within a play, a staged reading built around a morning in the life of an unknowable couple, Maddy and Dan, artfully brought to life by Eileen Atkins and Michael  Gambon. The piece has the fizz of shaken Coke cans. We get sudden bursts of golden froth, and then it all goes flat.

What are we to read into the silences, and the impenetrable ponderings on old bones, pig manure and dead children? Beckett's style is to leave us to fill the spaces. In this 75 minute production which sees Maddy set off for the station to meet her husband as a birthday surprise, the spaces are constantly fuzzy, intermittently funny and on occasion perplexing. This is particularly true of the ending, when we discover the reason for Dan's train home being delayed is that a child fell onto the tracks and was killed. Is Dan responsible?

Gambon as Dan, looms large and blind. For an audience seeing, rather than hearing, him with his wife, there is immense power in the big, strong hands that feel their way around Maddy's face. As the lights go down, the actors in the radio studio look as discomfited as the punters in the stalls.

In conclusion: The enjoyment is in trying to build the bigger picture. Atkins is wonderful. The radio setting, even with best endeavours, makes the piece very inward looking, but it is short, and the action stops before it starts to pall.

References
Arts Theatre, tickets
Henry Hitchings review (Jermyn Street) in The Evening Standard