It seems like there are no end to the gimmicks in London. It is possible to have a meal in a blacked-out room at Dans Le Noir. Or to “see” a play where audience members are urged to wear a blindfold at the Arts Theatre. Only thing is, this play, “All That Fall,” is no gimmick. We are talking of a fine 50-minute piece by Samuel Beckett, which has transferred from a short and successful run at Wilton’s Music Hall. The blindfolds are completely integral to the experience.Beckett’s works, it must be said, often work well on the radio. A lot of his interchanges are to do with stasis, non-action and dialogue. Obviously the most famous is “Waiting for Godot” with its closing lines: “-Well? Shall we go? -Yes, let’s go.” (They do not move.)” But it is true across the canon of some 30 plays. And the words remain, as in radio: often poetic or simple, a love for the music of speech. The works that take this to extreme include those really intended for broadcast on radio and described by Beckett as “coming out of the dark.”“All That Fall,” written for the BBC in 1956, is a case in point, with the playwright refusing later offers for its staging by directors including Laurence Olivier and Ingmar Bergman, and its filming by Alain Resnais.So how to stage the seemingly unstageable? It has been achieved a few times in fact, so Max Stafford-Clark, the artistic director of theater company Out of Joint, is not the first.When he decided to take on the conundrum, he was asked by the Beckett estate what his vision was. He replied that there was no vision at all, which was obviously the right answer because he was given the go-ahead.Members of the audience are given airplane blindfolds on arrival. In front is a simple set with the Out of Joint logo displayed upon it. Not everyone obeyed the order/ request to wear the intrusive blindfolds (though peaking spoils the effect). With dim lighting or closed eyes the experience also works well.We have to rely on our ears as members of the cast make their way around the auditorium. Sometimes the main characters might be within feet of us, sometimes far away. Loudspeakers placed around the seats deliver spatial sound effects of farmyard animals, trains and roadside traffic. We listen to the elderly Mrs. Rooney (played by Brid Brennan) as she makes her way to the station to collect her husband as a birthday treat. He is blind and suddenly his experience means more.There are a very few critics who proclaim “All That Fall” as being the best by Beckett. Realistically it is an impressive work though it is hard to imagine how it can beat “Endgame” or many others.We laugh at some of the bizarre questions such as “I suppose you wouldn't be in need of a small load of dung?” And remarks taken out of context without visual clues such as “I’m has stiff as yourself.”There are pieces of homespun knowledge and potted humor which often rise above their prosaic context to be genuinely philosophic: “It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.”This production bears comparison with the best Beckett works staged in London over the last few years. Peter Brook directed an outstanding series of fragments at the Young Vic including “Rockaby”; Barry McGovern turned the novel “Watt” into an outstanding 50-minute monologue at the Barbican.As a sidenote, the Arts Theatre has been an excellent venue for the best part of 90 years and punches way above its weight on the West End scene. It is to be hoped that plans for the site’s redevelopment, just confirmed, mean that its radical driving force is maintained. Of course there are many fine smaller, experimental or independent venues in the center of town, from the Donmar through Soho Theatre, Trafalgar Studios and, well, take your pick, but everyone in the arts would welcome more rather than less.
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