It is as much a pleasure to write this Presidential address for the second issue of the Beckett Review as it was to write the first. This fine issue looks wonderful and reads just as well. Before anything else I want to express my enormous gratitude to the crack team of Feargal Whelan and Patrick Bixby who have done such a beautiful job of bringing this issue together with their trademark skill.
It is an issue reflecting the vibrancy of Beckett theatre scholarship and creative production in particular. It is wonderful to see Alicia Nudler’s great article on comparative theatrical productions of Krapp’s Last Tape in three distinctive and high-profile productions (Robert Wilson, Héctor Bidonde, Patrick Magee) come out. Nudler reads the play and the unfolding dynamic of these different performances through the lens of psychologist Daniel Stern’s concept of ‘forms of vitality’ (movement experiences that underpin attunement). Nudler’s article is the first in a series of early career scholar publications the Review will support to publication — a fascinating, illuminating and original piece of scholarship that has more than repaid our initial excitement as a Board in this work.
The issue also offers a range of reviews of theatre productions, including prominently a trio of Krapps, two from what Emilie Morin called a veritable ‘Krapp Month’ in the UK in April 2025: the Stephen Rea Krapp’s Last Tape (reviewed by Vicky Featherstone), using recordings he himself made 14 years ago, in the vast space of the Barbican theatre; and the high profile Gary Oldman Krapp (reviewed by Emilie Morin) in the Theatre Royal, York (featuring the very spool-to-spool player used by John Hurt and Michael Gambon in the role, on loan from the Gate in Dublin). Lastly comes the innovative Krapp in Your Living Room virtual production created for the 2024 Samuel Beckett Society online conference Beckett’s Environments (illuminated here by Annette Balaam’s interview with the actor Philip Robinson).
Other theatre reviewed includes a fascinating adaptation of Worstward Ho for stage in Buenos Aires (reviewed by Alicia Nudler), involving an expressive dramaturgy and performance by Pablo Finamore (who also translated the text afresh for this production). Two US Waiting for Godot productions also feature. The star vehicle (hard not to call it the ‘Bill and Ted’ Godot) with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter at the Hudson Theater, reviewed by Michael Coffey (the general flavour is a Godot that played to the crowd in its casting but was disfigured by the brutalist expressionist design), counterpointed with Coffey’s review of a compelling Druid Theatre Endgame. At a welcome extreme from the Hudson extravaganza, a short run Godot from the Rogue Theater Company in Oregon (reviewed by Geoff Ridden) offered strong performances and a revealing, unrushed Lucky, in particular, in a distinctive performance space. Finally, a revival of the acclaimed staged Cascando, another rhythmic, immersive experience from Beckett stalwarts Pan Pan at the Jermyn Theatre in London, reviewed by James Baxter.
The final theatrical piece to mention is a review by editor Feargal Whelan of perhaps the most notable theatrical event featured, Sarah Jane Scaife’s production of Mary Manning’s neglected Youth’s the Season –?. Scaife produced a riveting danse macabre, in Whelan’s term, drawing out the play’s colonial anxiety and gender politics, with the added pull for this readership of an unsettlingly precise embodiment of the 1930s Beckett in the character of Terence (modelled on Beckett himself by Manning)–played, as Whelan eloquently puts it, with an appropriate “admixture of brilliance and arrogance, torpor, and fear”.
Away from the theatre, at the centre of the Review are Amjad AlShalan’s reflections on the scintillating Society Conference in Edinburgh in June, a piece doing justice to the conference’s rich blend of scholarship, theatre, art, and even immersive VR. AlShalan’s writing also offers a thoughtful and compelling account of finding her own experience of Beckett, at a certain geographical and cultural threshold, reverberating with other perspectives on the theatrical round table, and shaping new directions for a changing, growing Beckett community. As she put it, beautifully, the map is still unfolding.
Another way in which our community is growing and renewing is the appointment of new Honorary Trustees, after the loss earlier this year of both John Fletcher and Martha Fehsenfeld. The first of these was announced as the celebrated director of Beckett’s work (and collaborator with Beckett) Walter D. Asmus, who graciously accepted our invitation in person at the Beckett International Foundation annual seminar at Reading in November–where we were lucky enough also to hear Ros Maprayil, Mark Taylor-Batty, Trish McTighe and Katherine White speak, and launch Ruby Cohn’s last, posthumous publication, Glancing at Dramatists’ Dialogues, edited by Daniela Caselli and Hannah Simpson.
Building on the Society conference in June, the issue also announces our forthcoming Society panel at the state-of-the-field Modern Languages Association (MLA) meeting in Toronto in January 2026. It feels only fitting that we disseminate there some of the groundbreaking recent scholarship on Beckett’s female contemporaries. The stellar panel will feature Julie Bates, Dúnlaith Bird and Georgina Nugent on the concept of the ‘modernist wife’, framing the important artistic legacy of the often marginalised figures of Suzanne Dumesnil and Alice B. Toklas, as well as their complex artistic and biographical relationship to Beckett and Gertrude Stein.
Last, but far from least, this issue of the Review celebrates two significant publications, Michael Krimper and Gabriel Quigley’s edited collection Beckett Ongoing: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Springer Verlag 2024), reviewed by James Martell, an elegant and trenchant set of interventions on the power of Beckett’s aesthetics to illuminate political and ethical concerns; and the important collection edited by Board Vice-President José Francisco Fernández and Mar Garre García, Samuel Beckett and Translation (Edinburgh UP 2021)–a timely, wide-ranging and illuminating volume showcasing recent work that cements the centrality of translation to Beckett’s creative expression and ever-renewing legacy.
Beyond the contents of this Review, I also want to mark the fantastic work of Board members and stalwarts of the Beckett community that has taken place since the last issue. Katherine Weiss continues to organize exceptionally valuable and thoughtful seminars through the Society’s Early Career Scholar initiative, welcoming leading scholars (former President) Laura Salisbury, David Pattie and Arka Chattopadhyay in October to speak at a session entitled ‘With and Beyond Beckett: Competitive Research Careers’. Vice-President José Francisco Fernández, Lucas Margarit and Luz María Sanchez continue to organize their very successful Spanish-language Beckett seminar series, Seminario Verticé SB, with Lucas Margarit (10th Oct) and Gunnary Prado (12th Dec) featuring as speakers this autumn. The London Beckett Seminar also welcomed the (evidently tireless!) José Francisco Fernández (17th Oct), Luz María Sanchez (14th Nov), and Chris Ackerley, Llewellyn Brown and Anthony Cordingley (5th Dec) at its convivial and enlightening Friday nights. Finally Swati Joshi organised a superb second instalment of the Grey Pluralities seminar series (30th Nov), featuring Mark Byron, David Pattie, Thomas Symeonidis, Marina Stavrou, Matthew Lloyd, Eleftheria Kavazi, and me, on the generative topic of ‘the cold’ in Beckett.
There has been much else besides, but this is already a lot of richness to digest! I’m delighted to sign off on such a buoyant note (despite everything happening outside of our Society borders) and wish everyone a very happy holiday when it comes.
Until next time!
Liz
The Beckett Review 
Leave a comment