"Fragment" directed by Peter Brooks at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre - February 2, 2008

If you're serious about theater, get excited by amazing acting, or love to see what an amazing director does with strong but incredibly dense scripts, go see this show. It's incredible.

Peter Brooks has taken fragments of works by Samuel Beckett and created an evening length piece out of them. The second piece is a series of repetitions of a a few lines of monologue with small differences over time. In the hands of anything less than remarkable actor, this piece would have seemed silly and been dully. In the hands of Katherine Hunter, it illuminates the nature of language and also has great emotional urgency. Plus, there's the added thrill of seeing such mastery in place.

In another piece there are two bags on stage and a pile of clothes. A large stick comes down and pokes one of the bags and a man comes out. He's miserable about being awaken, miserable about putting his pants on backwards, miserable about the terrible carrot he found in the pocket, miserable about his day. He eventually goes back into the bag and the stick comes down to wake up the second actor. he comes out thrilled about waking up, thrilled about his clothes, thrilled about the tasty carrot he's found in the pocket, and thrilled with his day. All of this is done with no dialogue. Another piece that would be flat if not in the hand of remarkable actors. Like the monologue, we see how language can change meaning except in this case language is reduced to gesture. To up the ante, Brooks ends the piece when the miserable man is awaken b the stick a second time but instead of being just miserable, he also seems sad. This repetition with a difference deepens the poetry of the piece.

Each piece is an exercise in directing and acting but they are also extremely warm but just technically brilliant and smart.