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“The Lord upholdeth all that fall” – such is the dubious source of Samuel Beckett’s first radio play, All That Fall. Written in 1956 at the BBC’s suggestion, the play aired on 13 January 1957 to a loyal radio audience. Pan Pan’s production harks back to that same audience in an attempt to recreate the conceptuality of the original broadcast. Faithful to the sense of occasion of early radio, Pan Pan innovatively utilise lights, sound and set to present a communal auditory event. Having toured the world to great acclaim, the Abbey’s revival of All That Fall on its national stage is an appropriate recognition of one of Ireland’s greatest theatre companies and the 110th birthday of one of its greatest playwrights.
Seated on sixty or so wooden rocking chairs, the audience is relocated from the Abbey’s tiered red seats on to the stage where a large children’s storytelling rug covers the floor. Above, dimmed light bulbs hang down at intervals, suspended as if like stars. When the lights go down, we are met with the sound of rural animals and Mrs. Rooney’s voice (Áine Ní Mhuirí) as she brings us on an arduous journey to collect her husband from the train station. Old, tired, and fed up with the toils of life, Mrs. Rooney gruelingly drags herself through the village, dodging locals and remonstrating any attempts to help her. Her husband (Andrew Bennett), blind and hoping for deafness, reiterates his wife’s frustration with old age. With humorous retorts and complaints the two satirically criticise all around them giving rise to more than a few chuckles from the audience.
All That Fall’s humour, however, is off-set by the dark undertones of mortality and expiration that permeate the play. Cushions on the rocking chairs ominously portray skulls. Each vehicle or train that passes Mrs Rooney catches the audience in its headlights, as if it is hurtling towards us, and we towards doom. Beckett maintained that All That Fall was written “for voices not bodies” yet the slow, strained shuffle of Mrs. Rooney and her husband, their collapse on the steps and the struggle to lift her into the car, all emphasise the physicality of old age and its role in the slow progression towards death. Beckett wrote of his work for radio that it depends on “the whole thing’s coming out of the dark”. Pan Pan quite literally evoke this for the audience when they finally throw us out of darkness by blinding us with the beam lights. For anyone who may have taken solace in the lull of the rocking chair, the final ending ensures that rather than approaching a dark, even peaceful death, the All That Fall journey promises to wake with a rather shocking start.
All That Fall runs at the Abbey until 20th February. Tickets start at €20.
