Fiennes does Beckett
There is something so powerful about watching an actor of outstanding abilities standing in the one spot, using little more than his face and voice to tell a tale of an hour’s length.
Such is the performance of Ralph Fiennes in First Love, a Samuel Beckett novella which has been turned into a monologue play having its world premiere during the Sydney Festival.
The play, with the multi-Oscar nominee directed by Michael Colgan, is the star act of the Sydney Festival, and Fiennes lives up to all expectations in a performance which is thrilling in its simple details and devastating in its tragic telling.
He delivers a performance of great mastery as a homeless man telling of his isolation and the time when love entered his life and he was not sure what to do about it. On an almost bare set, Fiennes brings life to Beckett’s rich use of the language.
While the tone of the tale is unrelentingly bleak, Fiennes manages to imbue it with moments of dark humour, making it a compelling journey of exploration, rather than just the tale of hopelessness it could have been in lesser hands. That the sad story even manages to reach a moment of revelation in its resolution adds to the haunting experience.
