2005/2006
Directed and designed by Judy Hegarty Lovett
CAST
Lee DeLong
Lighting by Judy Hegarty Lovett
Beckett’s penultimate extended prose piece in english was completed in 1982 and translated much later by Edith Fournier as Cap au pire.
Its point of origin may have been from King Lear where Edgar notes, ‘The worst is not/So long as we can say, This is the worst.
In the fourth paragraph the text announces its intention; “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” and it proceeds to do it.
Lee DeLong premiered the piece at Cork Public Museum as part of Access All Beckett, Gare St Lazare Ireland’s contribution to the Cork European Capital of Culture in 2005. She subsequently toured it to Galway and to The Irish Museum of Modern Art, chq, Dublin and to Bard College’s Fisher Center during the Beckett Centenary in 2006.
The failure, of course, and the human capacity to persist with it, is what interests Beckett: “try again, fail again, fail better.” Delong fails beautifully.perhaps because it is so unexpected, Delong’s recital is also enthralling.
also makes us aware of how astonishing it is than anyone can commit to memory so difficult, dense, and strangely structured a text. Usually, the actor remembering the lines is something we take for granted. Here, that act of remembering is also a touching triumph over oblivion.
The Irish Times
In Worstward Ho language is both stretched and pared back. Lee Delong brings extraordinary depth and sympathy to a mind that is involuting and a body that no longer serves that mind. Her inflections, gestures—even her smiles—lead us through the thicket of negative abstractions, humanizing it, so that it becomes triumphant and moving. The Guardian.
Lee Delong gives a master class in delivery and control—the ability to relate the text to the audience without so much as a stutter should not be underestimated. The Irish Examiner.
It would hardly be going too far to suggest that the three performances alone justify the city’s European City of Culture year, even if Gare St. Lazare are merely visiting from Paris….”Dim can worsen,” Delong reminds herself, dressed with comic inappropriateness as a belligerent samurai warrior, but needing the ageing comfort of a fleece to top it off. The Sunday Independent
Photo: MacSweeneys, Cork.