Play and Not I

with Katharine Williams as Lighting Designer

Set designer:

15/07/2005 to 07/08/2005

Show type:

Press quotes

This revival [of of Play] in a double-bill with Not I is ...a clever pairing because of the existence in both plays of a cold, thin beam of light that orders the words into existence.
Jeremy Kingston, The Times 22/07/2005
Studio One at BAC has had the seats ripped out so it looks more like a gallery than a theatre, and it creates a minimalist setting for this journey, from the piercing searchlight interrogation of the three heads in urns in Play, to the lone illuminated jabbering mouth of Not I that is silenced only... continue reading
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian 25/07/2005
In Not I the speaker (Lisa Dwan) is no more than a pair of lips caught in the beam of light, a disembodied mouth like an image from a Bacon painting that spouts a torrent of words, on, on, on, not stopping till the beam fades and the mouth, still faintly uttering, vanishes from sight.
Jeremy Kingston, The Times 22/07/2005 evening where the imaginative power of the plays knocks you out.
Jeremy Kingston, The Times 22/07/2005
In Play, the three protagonists seem doomed to repeat themselves and their banalities for infinity, forever under interrogation by an almighty searchlight. In Not I it is obliteration that beckons, the final putting out of the light. Billie Whitelaw described performing it as ''falling... continue reading
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian 25/07/2005
John Hopkins is a perfect M, ridiculously polite, howling with anguish and blinking his confusion at the spotlight, which switches the characters on and off with the finality of a remote control...
Lucy Powell, Timeout London 27/07/2005
Play, the longer piece, is written for three heads extruding from three ageing, earth-clad urns. They take their turns to speak, prompted by a restless, inquisitive spotlight randomly dancing from one face to another.
Keiron Quirke, Metro 22/07/2005
In Natalie Abrahami's Battersea Arts Centre revival of Beckett's Play, a man and two women housed in urns, their heads picked out by a spotlight, rattle through the details of the affair that binds them together in a sort of Sartrean hell.
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph 26/07/2005
Amanda Drew, John Hopkins and Anna Hewson, as grey as their urns, speak only when the light is upon them... only the mouths move, and the glimpses of tongue and palate, red where all else is grey, are disquieting reminders of a life in death.
Jeremy Kingston, The Times 22/07/2005
A far more comprehensible degree of jabbering hysteria is achieved in the companion piece, Not I, a solo role for a spotlit mouth. Lisa Dwan's - contorting and twitching away high up in the air and far back in the dark - makes an unforgettable sight, and in itself is worth the price of... continue reading
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph 26/07/2005