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Beckett’s Room was an experimental high art co-production work by Dead Centre and The Gate Theatre. The audience members go to their seats and are asked to put headphones on, while there is an immense projection of an eye on stage. After a couple of minutes of pre-excitement as the headphones were being checked, the theatre goes dark and reveals its once forgotten magic. 

The eye invites the spectators to see Samuel Beckett and Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil’s apartment where they hid during Nazi-occupied Paris. There, the audience are able to hear their breaths, count their steps and listen to the prosody of their words in English, French and German – a notable addition considering that Beckett was interested in linguistics and spoke these languages. As mentioned, this production restores the magic of the mysterious blackbox of theatre. Beckett’s Room demonstrates the semiotic importance of objects on stage, the element of pauses, breaths, silence, language and the pace of steps in Beckettian works as this artwork, in particular, uses only these tools to recreate a world in front of the audiences’ eyes. There are no bodies on stage. 

There is a magical puppetry technique across the entire stage, which accompanies an  excellent use of sound design (AV). For instance, the first thing that can be seen is a typewriter typing by itself as the audience is invited to use their imagination. In particular, this performance is incredible for theatre-goers who are interested in Beckettian works. And, believably, it would be also welcomed by non-theatre-goers of our generation, considering its creativity, technology, and that there are floating objects on stage (I overheard someone say: “it was like Harry Potter, but in front of you”). Besides, it is applicable as a general knowledge tool for people to see a writer’s struggle during World War II – there are also fragments of José Miguel Jiménez’s videos of empty Parisian streets, the emptiness of which is noted by one of the characters. People who are familiar with Beckett’s works had genuine laughs with the parts peppered with fragmented references to his works, such as a scene where there were only carrots and turnips available to eat in the kitchen – a nod to Waiting for Godot and a subtle demonstration of postmodernism, assumingly. Moreover, there was also a clear power relationship between personas onstage. For example, two Nazis and a prisoner onstage could be compared to Pozzo, Estragon and Lucky – the prisoner was dumb and could not speak, he was tied with rope like Lucky and the ‘less firm’ Nazi was trying to make him speak and calls him pig. The soldier says: “Let’s go”, the other says: “We can’t”… as they were waiting, not for Godot, but for Samuel Beckett. 

It is a captivating production. In one fantastic moment, where one of the characters says: “a charnel house” and asks: “where are all these corpses from?” the auditorium lights the spectators and there is a moment of recognition between ghosts fluctuating onstage and all the deadly silent audience members. The term ‘audience-performer relationship’ is inapplicable in this instance. The only disappointing thing is going back to reality after the performance.