Splinter Group, which produces a yearly “Buckets o’ Beckett” festival in tribute to the genius of the Irish-born Samuel Beckett, has just re-opened two programs from the recent fest. “Krapp’s Last Tape,” one of Beckett’s best-known plays, and the five plays that make up the “Best of Buckets” program have moved back to Splinter’s home theater at 1937 W. Division St., where each will get an additional four performances, running in rotating repertory on Saturday and Sunday evenings through July 9.
“Krapp’s Last Tape,” a one-actor play first produced in New York in 1960, opens with the title character waiting for the clock to strike the moment of his birth anniversary–his 69th– when he will tape record his annual summation of the year gone by. But first he searches for and replays the recording from his 39th birthday, revealing the man he was then and (indirectly) at 27.
Splinter Group co-founder Matt O’Brien plays the title role in a production originally directed by Craig Bradshaw.
The five short plays of the “Best of Buckets” program include:
“Ohio Impromptu,” which features two characters, a Reader and a Listener, as they read and listen to the end of a story about two characters much like themselves.
“Act Without Words 2,” a 1950s pantomime of two men wrapped in burlap bags who are forced by an offstage goad into waking one at a time from their sleep, a routine that will be repeated the next day.
“Footfalls,” a grim view of the maternal knot in which an insomniac woman paces the stage as she attempts to tend the needs of her mother dying offstage.
“Play,” Beckett’s famous “urn play,” in which a trio of dead lovers with only their heads protruding from identical urns endlessly recount the story of their sordid triangle as the whole story comes out in pieces.
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“Nacht and Traume,” a pantomime about a white-haired dreamer originally written for German television in the 1970s.
For details and tickets, call the Splinter Group box office at 312-342-7656.