“Play” by Samuel Beckett. I directed this play in college and must have read it a thousand times. This version is directed by Anthony Minghella, and is performed by Juliet Stevenson, Kristen Scott-Thomas and Alan Rickman.
It begins the trend toward minimal or no movement in Beckett’s plays. He imagined his performance pieces as living paintings. When he had a hand in them, they were specified very exactly. He didn’t view them as open to interpretation.
It’s a “love” triangle that plays out into eternity. Three souls tied together in pain and obsession. It’s the internal dialogue that stops time and space and supercedes the physical world. Some take the visuals to be literal, and therefore “absurd.” I view them as literal, or rather very exact, in their depiction of an emotional landscape.
Part 2