The other actors each assigned to one or two audience members all play the voice and manipulate the participants' bodies. When Memory describes an outing with your mother, a feminine hand tugs at your own. This hand strokes your head, tucks blankets over you, lifts you to standing. The touch is tender, but the toucher foreign leading to a strange mix of infantilization and frisson. The play works less successfully for female theatergoers, because as in most Beckett the protagonist is male and the constant use of words such as he , him , and his can't help but create a distancing effect.
Gender dilemmas aside, the piece works very well.
And, lasting only an hour, it doesn't overstay its welcome, making it excellent company indeed. The Inn Crowd Performance art comes to . . . In Live From the Living Room , curator Neke Carson presents a series of Tuesday-night salons at the Gershwin Hotel hostelry of choice for the arty and Euro. Taking over the ground-floor Living Room the space where director Elyse Singer recently mounted Mae West's Sex Carson lets each week's celebrity host select that night's performers. October 10 was writer Anthony Haden-Guest's turn.