But if you’re up for something different, you’re unlikely to forget sitting in total darkness looking high up on a stage where only a volatile, red-lipped mouth is visible under an intense spotlight. From it pours a torrent of words, a stream of consciousness monologue delivered at breakneck speed.
After a short, completely blacked-out pause, solo performer Lisa Dwan is back – in full view this time, dressed in a ghostly-white long dress and eerily illuminated. Repeatedly taking nine metronome-like steps forward, then nine back in accordance with Beckett’s precise stage directions, she paces outside her mother’s sick room in Footfalls.
Finally, now in black and rocking gently to and fro in an old rocking chair, she’s clinging on to the last moments of life as she hears her own recorded voice responding to her repeated entreaties for “More”.
Though only an hour long in total, this trio of late works certainly makes demands on both audience and actor and Dwan is compelling throughout – compulsively gabbling in the first, sadly spectral in the second, hypnotic in the third and lonely in all three.
Where: Duchess, Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA (tickets through Royal Court)
Tube: Covent Garden/ Charing Cross
When: Until February 15
Cost: £12.00- £25.00