Adelaide Festival Theatre, part of the Adelaide Festival
24 February, 2015

The barely perceptible flicker of an overhead light before Eh Joe commences forewarns that we are about to enter a world where wiring is not the only thing under strain. This is the bleak and edgy setting for the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s triptych of plays by Irish theatrical visionary Samuel Beckett.

Joe’s three-windowed room is grey-toned and oppressive, and feels airless and uninspiring. Here, reflection and introspection meet nuance and subtlety. Paul Blackwell is the dishevelled Joe; his plaid dressing gown atop a Kowalski-wife-beater-style shirt. The anticipation of who is beneath this guise intrigues through the first moments of silence. Whilst ensuring he is alone, it is from himself and an inner voice from the past that he cannot escape. Perhaps a prodromal indicator of worse times ahead, this glimpse in time exposes segments of Joe’s past as he sits alone on his bed. Blackwell impresses a consideration of plagued retrospection, in a snapshot of the present moment, which leads inextricably to a scrutiny of regret tinged with guilt.

Directed by Corey McMahon, God is in the detail of Beckett’s 1965...