Eh Joe
Encyclopedia
Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett
, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author’s fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May. “It [was] followed by six undated typescripts (numbered 0 - 4 and ‘final version’).”
Despite the English version being recorded first, due to delays at the BBC
, the first actual broadcast was of Elmer and Erika Tophoven’s German translation, He Joe, on 13 April 1966, Beckett’s sixtieth birthday, by Süddeutscher Rundfunk
, Stuttgart
; Beckett directed, his first credit as such. Deryk Mendel played Joe and Nancy Illig voiced the woman.
The first English broadcast went out eventually on BBC2 (4 July 1966) with Jack MacGowran
, for whom the play was specifically written, playing Joe (originally ‘Jack’ at the start of the first draft) and Siân Phillips
as Voice. Beckett has asked for Billie Whitelaw
but she was tied up with another acting commitment. Alan Gibson
directed but with Beckett in attendance.
At least thirteen versions have been preserved on tape making it far and away Beckett’s most produced teleplay.
It was first published in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber
, 1967) – although the version published is closer to Typescript 3, mentioned above, than the version as broadcast.
Beckettian room. He is wearing an old dressing gown and a pair of carpet slippers
.
Like a young child, checking for monsters, Joe methodically goes through his room. As he does so the camera follows him…
The camera cuts to a close-up
of Joe. His eyes are closed, his features relaxed. Beckett indicates that the close-up should begin with the camera one yard (1 m) from his face and dolly-in
gradually throughout the piece. He indicates nine breaks where the camera is allowed to move, four inches (102 mm) closer each time. By the end of the play, the camera is literally staring him in the eyes. “The numeral nine has often been associated with death,” e.g. there are nine circles in Dante’s
vision of Hell.
As the woman begins to speak Joe opens his eyes and his face displays a look of “intentness”. He is trapped, which is how Beckett referred to the room in Film
; the situation here is very similar, in fact Beckett originally had Joe on a seat just like O but obviously decided that “a more telling image for a seducer
would be alone on a bed.” The voice utters nine short speeches during which Beckett requires the actor remain practically motionless and stares unblinkingly toward – though not directly at – the camera lens, an extraordinary demand for physical restraint to ask of any actor, though in reality there were instances where, when filming, MacGowran did close his eyes for effect (e.g. after the word “Gillette
”, he closes his eyes and his face winces in pain). Only during the short gaps, while the camera moves, can he relax his gaze momentarily. Despite these unscripted breaks MacGowran found the role “the most gruelling twenty-two minutes I have ever had in my life” but he also admits it was the only time he was “wholly pleased with this work.” He wrote later:
”. “The voice becomes a technical device, on a par with the dolly.” In the original recording “the vocal colourlessness at which Beckett was aiming was achieved by placing a microphone
right up against [the actress’s] mouth and, as her voice was being recorded, both high and low frequencies
were filtered out.”
Billie Whitelaw, who finally got to tackle the role in 1989, recalls:
“Whitelaw [has] emphasized over and again in her workshops … the difference between playing ‘character roles’ and acting the Beckett roles she played with ‘no colour.’ Whitelaw explained how she concentrated her attention on timing, rhythm, and the musicality of texts, as well as creating an active metaphor
for a role so that she could play the role with ‘no colour.’ She also explained how she delivered her lines as a form of ‘Chinese water torture
’ so that each phrase of the text was delivered as a drop of water literally dripped into Joe's head.”
She remembers that Beckett mentioned “the phrase ‘suppressed venom’ in relation to the woman. She seems to be jealous of the other women she describes, vindictive. He also said to remember that she is weary … I must also try to remember that she is a voice in someone else’s head, a disembodied voice.”
to ... but the clouds ... in which a man strains nightly to evoke the image of a woman with little success. Like O in Film, Joe has gone through his routine, doing what he feels he needs to do to protect himself and like the man in Film he is sitting quietly thinking he is safe. But he is not. It is not a face he finds watching himself but a voice he hears, a woman’s voice. As the voice progresses we move closer and closer to Joe.
To Alan Schneider
, Beckett wrote on 7 April 1966: "Voice should be whispered. A dead voice in his head. Minimum of colour. Attacking. Each sentence a knife going in, pause for withdrawal, then in again."
36” – The voice wants to know if Joe has checked everything. Why is he still sitting there with the light on? Why doesn’t he go to bed? He’s changed the covers.
32” – She reminds him that he’d told her that the best was still to come but that it was the last thing he did say to her as he hurried her into her coat and bundled her out the door.
28” – She is not the first voice that has come to him like this, in his mind; although the woman hints that the source may be external. His father’s voice came to him for years until Joe found a way to stop him talking, to metaphorically throttle him, then his mother and finally, others, “[a]ll the others”, everyone it seems who ever loved him.
24” – She asks if there is anyone left who might love him. He’s reduced to paying for sex, once a week. She warns him to be careful he doesn’t run out of people to take advantage of because then there would only be him left to adore him until he too died. She assures him that she is not in heaven and not to expect to go there himself.
20” – The woman recalls one time the two of them were together. It was summer, they were sitting together on the grass watching the ducks, holding hands and exchanging vows. He’d complimented her on her elocution
and she remarks how well he used to express himself. Now, like he did with his parents and the others, he has “[s]queezed her down to this”, the slow monotonous drone we hear. She knows her time is limited and wonders when all she will have left is a whisper. She lashes out at him and asks him to imagine if he never managed to rid himself of her until he died and was with her in death himself.
16”– Joe has been a religious man. She wants to know if he’s as righteous as he used to profess to be. She quotes from the parable
of Jesus
about the rich man and says one day God will talk to him like she is doing and, when he does, it’ll be time for him to die.
12” – Joe had said that the best was to come. She tells him that, for her at least, it did. She found someone far better than he was and lists off all the ways.
8” – She did all right. “But there was one didn’t.” One of Joe’s other loves, a young, slim, pale girl did not fare so well. He said the same thing to her that the best was yet to come, just as he did with Voice, as he bundled the girl out the door with no intention of furthering the relationship now he’d got what he wanted from her. In fact his aeroplane ticket was in his pocket ready for him to make good his escape. The timeline is unclear but the likelihood is that his relationship with Voice came first.
4” – She wants to know if Joe knew what happened to her, if she’d told him. Of course she hadn’t. The first he’d heard about it was an announcement in the Independent. Joe tries harder to throttle the voice. She knows her time is short and begins to goad him. “Mud thou art,” she tells him – more commonly heard as “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” – Genesis 3:19.
0” – The woman proceeds to tell him what exactly happened to the girl he abandoned. Voice describes her going down to the sea close to her house wearing only her lavender slip
where she attempts to drown herself but it doesn’t work. The girl returns to the house, sopping wet, fetches a razor – the make Joe recommended to her – goes back down the garden, this time to the viaduct
, where she also fails to slit her wrists. She tears a strip of silk from her slip and ties it round the scratch. She goes back to the house and this time gets some tablets. She takes a few on her way back down the garden. When she reaches the viaduct she decides to head further down near the Rock and takes some more on the way. When she reaches the spot she empties the tube and lies down in the end with her face a few feet from the – presumably incoming – tide.
At this point Beckett added the following instruction, which is not included in the printed text: “Eyes remember.”
Joe makes a concerted effort at this point and the woman’s voice drops to a whisper. She makes Joe imagine the girl lying there, describing events in erotic terms: “… part the lips … solitaire … Breasts in the stones …Imagine the hands … What are they fondling? … There’s love for you …” Another change Beckett made here was to add in a greater degree of repetition, particularly the word “imagine” emphasising that what we are hearing here is primarily a work of imagination rather than simple recollection.
The voice falls silent and the image fades out. Joe has finally rid himself of her. As his face vanishes we realise he is smiling, an important addition Beckett made to the play but which was never incorporated in the printed text. “Here, for the first time, Joe looks at the camera”. This may not represent a final victory but he has silenced her for now.
In the “version of He Joe directed by Walter Asmus and Beckett, recorded in Germany 1979 … [t]he camera pursues Joe in line with the text’s instructions; but Joe is positioned on the right of the frame, and he does not look at the camera as it moves inexorably closer. The effect is to deepen the ambiguity of the voice’s location; Joe’s posture suggests that the voice is whispering directly into his ear, but the place where the one whispering would normally sit is, the framing constantly reminds us, empty.”
Why a woman though and why this particular woman? “Aspects of consciousness, according to Jung
, can become almost independent personalities and might even ‘become visible or audible. They appear as visions, they speak in voices which are like the voices of definite people.’” “His protagonist
represents an aspect of psychological duality, akin to Jung’s Anima or Shadow
. Voice in Eh Joe is less Joe’s dark or evil side than his opposite: feminine, constant, secure and irreligious, to Joe’s masculine, lecherous, dishonest but (surprisingly) religious self,”
There is little material to build a fully rounded character but the woman appears to have been a survivor. Whereas the other one, “[t]he green one” as she calls her, couldn’t bear to live without Joe, the woman whose voice Joe hears made a better life for herself without him. She is the logical choice for Joe’s last surviving accuser. In many respects she is the distillation of all the previous voices, a last gasp, pointing an accusing finger at him on behalf of herself and all the others, particularly the suicide. In doing so 'he finds that hell is not only other people but himself'.
We learn nothing about why his mother or father might trouble him after their deaths but disapproving or disappointed parents are plentiful enough throughout Beckett’s work. Joe suffers his father’s ‘ghost’ for years until he realises that he can affect it, that by an act of will he can stop the words, to make the literally dead also figuratively dead. In a letter sent to MacGreevy on 6 April 1965, Beckett writes: "I shake at the thought of the ordeal you have been through. At least you are through it. You mustn't give up. Putting down memories is enough to make anyone crack." This is what Beckett means by the expression “All your dead dead,” those ‘ghosts’ that he has exorcised in this way. This is reminiscent of the following lines from The Expelled:
“The play is full of verbs conveying what Joe’s voice describes as ‘mental thuggee
’: throttle, muzzle, spike, squeeze, tighten, silence, garrotte, finish, mum, strangle, stamp out, exterminate, still, kill, lay, choke.” “’It is his passion to kill the voices which he cannot kill,’ said Beckett.”
The religious subtext did not exist in the earliest drafts. Beckett incorporated it after a two-week break in working on the play. He makes Joe a Catholic
(as the prayer to Mary
suggests) and, as the Catholic Church views suicide as a mortal sin
, how would Joe feel if he thought he might be even indirectly responsible for this? This, of course, brings up the whole issue of Catholic guilt
. An omission in all printed versions is the capitalization in the expression, “The passion of our Joe,” which Beckett wanted to read – though of course it makes no difference to the performance – “The passion of Our Joe.”
It has been suggested that Joe is actually masturbating while all this is going on – and some of Voice’s remarks do, not unreasonably, attack his current level of sexual prowess – but scholars tend to skim over the imagery used in the final section of Voice’s diatribe so it is difficult to give anything more than a speculative interpretation. Beckett certainly has not shied away from the subject (it appears in Mercier and Camier
for example) but there is a danger of reading too much into Beckett rather than just enough.
filmmaker Atom Egoyan
successfully premiered a version of Eh Joe at the Gate Theatre
in Dublin in April 2006 featuring Michael Gambon
as Joe with Penelope Wilton
as Voice. Karen Fricker wrote in The Guardian
:
Gambon subsequently reprised the role in London
and was due to appear at the Sydney Festival
in January 2007 for a special Beckett Season but had to pull out due to personal reasons. He was replaced by Charles Dance
.
In July 2008 Egoyan's production played New York City
with Wilton still as Voice, now joined by Liam Neeson
as Joe.
A less noteworthy staged interpretation was created by actor/director Cradeaux Alexander at the Kraine Theatre in his 2000 reworking which removed the old man completely from the proceedings, divided the woman's speech between three actresses and an actor leaving the audience to stand in as the beleaguered Joe. Among other things, the audience isn't Joe and doesn't share his history. Without him present to convey his guilt they are merely eavesdroppers. The performance also incorporated seventies disco music and male nudity. In interview, Alexander had this to say:
Eh Joe is the fourth and final play in a collection of short Beckett plays at the New York Theatre Workshop
directed by JoAnne Akalaitis
, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov
and featuring new music by Philip Glass
. The quartet, which started performances in December 2007, begins with Act Without Words I
, Act Without Words II
and Rough for Theatre I
before finishing with Eh Joe. Karen Kandel plays the Voice. Coincidentally, the New York Theatre Workshop and the aforementioned Kraine Theatre are in adjacent buildings on the theatre-rich Fourth Street Arts Block between Second Avenue and the Bowery
in Manhattan. http://www.nytw.org/beckett_info.asp
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author’s fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May. “It [was] followed by six undated typescripts (numbered 0 - 4 and ‘final version’).”
Despite the English version being recorded first, due to delays at the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, the first actual broadcast was of Elmer and Erika Tophoven’s German translation, He Joe, on 13 April 1966, Beckett’s sixtieth birthday, by Süddeutscher Rundfunk
Süddeutscher Rundfunk
The Süddeutscher Rundfunk was a German radio and television station operating in the northern part of the state of Baden-Württemberg. It existed from 1949 to 1998, when it was merged with the then Südwestfunk to form the Südwestrundfunk....
, Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
; Beckett directed, his first credit as such. Deryk Mendel played Joe and Nancy Illig voiced the woman.
The first English broadcast went out eventually on BBC2 (4 July 1966) with Jack MacGowran
Jack MacGowran
John Joseph "Jack" MacGowran was an Irish character actor, whose last film role was as the alcoholic director Burke Dennings in The Exorcist. He was probably best known for his work with Samuel Beckett.-Stage career:...
, for whom the play was specifically written, playing Joe (originally ‘Jack’ at the start of the first draft) and Siân Phillips
Siân Phillips
Jane Elizabeth Ailwên "Siân" Phillips, CBE, is a Welsh actress.-Early life:Phillips was born in Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales, the daughter of Sally , a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker-turned-policeman...
as Voice. Beckett has asked for Billie Whitelaw
Billie Whitelaw
Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...
but she was tied up with another acting commitment. Alan Gibson
Alan Gibson (director)
Alan Gibson was a Canadian director active in British film and television. Particularly notable for his work in horror, cinematic films directed by him include the 1968 Journey to Midnight, the 1970 Crescendo, the 1974 The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the 1977 Checkered Flag or Crash and the 1982...
directed but with Beckett in attendance.
At least thirteen versions have been preserved on tape making it far and away Beckett’s most produced teleplay.
It was first published in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
, 1967) – although the version published is closer to Typescript 3, mentioned above, than the version as broadcast.
Joe
The play opens with Joe, a grey-haired man his late fifties, sitting alone in an archetypalArchetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
Beckettian room. He is wearing an old dressing gown and a pair of carpet slippers
Slipper
A slipper or houseshoe is a semi-closed type of indoor/outdoor shoe, consisting of a sole held to the wearer's foot by a strap running over the toes or instep. Slippers are soft and lightweight compared to other types of footwear. They are mostly made of soft or comforting materials that allow a...
.
Like a young child, checking for monsters, Joe methodically goes through his room. As he does so the camera follows him…
- getting up, going to window, opening window, looking out, closing window, drawing curtain, standing intent.
- going from window to door, opening door, looking out, closing door, locking door, drawing hanging before door, standing intent.
- going from door to cupboard, opening cupboard, looking in, closing cupboard, locking cupboard, drawing hanging before cupboard, standing intent.
- going from cupboard to bed, kneeling down looking under bed, getting up, sitting down on edge of bed as when discovered, beginning to relax.
The camera cuts to a close-up
Close-up
In filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
of Joe. His eyes are closed, his features relaxed. Beckett indicates that the close-up should begin with the camera one yard (1 m) from his face and dolly-in
Camera dolly
A camera dolly is a specialized piece of filmmaking and television production equipment designed to create smooth camera movements . The camera is mounted to the dolly and the camera operator and focus puller or camera assistant, usually ride on the dolly to operate the camera...
gradually throughout the piece. He indicates nine breaks where the camera is allowed to move, four inches (102 mm) closer each time. By the end of the play, the camera is literally staring him in the eyes. “The numeral nine has often been associated with death,” e.g. there are nine circles in Dante’s
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
vision of Hell.
As the woman begins to speak Joe opens his eyes and his face displays a look of “intentness”. He is trapped, which is how Beckett referred to the room in Film
Film (film)
Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter...
; the situation here is very similar, in fact Beckett originally had Joe on a seat just like O but obviously decided that “a more telling image for a seducer
Seduction
In social science, seduction is the process of deliberately enticing a person to engage. The word seduction stems from Latin and means literally "to lead astray". As a result, the term may have a positive or negative connotation...
would be alone on a bed.” The voice utters nine short speeches during which Beckett requires the actor remain practically motionless and stares unblinkingly toward – though not directly at – the camera lens, an extraordinary demand for physical restraint to ask of any actor, though in reality there were instances where, when filming, MacGowran did close his eyes for effect (e.g. after the word “Gillette
Global Gillette
Gillette is a brand of Procter & Gamble currently used for safety razors, among other personal care products. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, it was one of several brands originally owned by The Gillette Company, a leading global supplier of products under various brands, which was...
”, he closes his eyes and his face winces in pain). Only during the short gaps, while the camera moves, can he relax his gaze momentarily. Despite these unscripted breaks MacGowran found the role “the most gruelling twenty-two minutes I have ever had in my life” but he also admits it was the only time he was “wholly pleased with this work.” He wrote later:
- “It’s really photographing the mind. It’s the nearest perfect play for television that you could come across, because the television camera photographs the mind better than anything else.”
Voice
As the camera moves – but not while the camera moves – we hear a woman’s voice addressing Joe. Beckett specifies that the voice should be as follows: “Low, distinct, remote, little colour, absolutely steady rhythm, slightly slower than normal.” The tone throughout is accusatory. Nancy Illig describes the kind of delivery that resulted from her work with Beckett in 1966, as a “hammering staccatoStaccato
Staccato is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration and separated from the note that may follow by silence...
”. “The voice becomes a technical device, on a par with the dolly.” In the original recording “the vocal colourlessness at which Beckett was aiming was achieved by placing a microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
right up against [the actress’s] mouth and, as her voice was being recorded, both high and low frequencies
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
were filtered out.”
Billie Whitelaw, who finally got to tackle the role in 1989, recalls:
- “For Eh Joe, I went over to ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and saw Sam. We read it together. I found it unbearably moving but we read it and he kept on hitting my nose – which is neither here nor there, very sweet – and we read it through and he kept on saying as always, ‘No colour, no colour’ and ‘slow’, I mean slower than I’ve ever known him want me to go before, even slower than FootfallsFootfallsFootfalls is a play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English, between 2 March and December 1975 and was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976 directed by Beckett himself. Billie Whitelaw, for whom the piece had been written, played...
: absolutely flat; absolutely on a monotone.”
“Whitelaw [has] emphasized over and again in her workshops … the difference between playing ‘character roles’ and acting the Beckett roles she played with ‘no colour.’ Whitelaw explained how she concentrated her attention on timing, rhythm, and the musicality of texts, as well as creating an active metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for a role so that she could play the role with ‘no colour.’ She also explained how she delivered her lines as a form of ‘Chinese water torture
Chinese water torture
Chinese water torture is the popular name for a method of water torture in which water is slowly dripped onto a person's forehead, allegedly driving the restrained victim insane...
’ so that each phrase of the text was delivered as a drop of water literally dripped into Joe's head.”
She remembers that Beckett mentioned “the phrase ‘suppressed venom’ in relation to the woman. She seems to be jealous of the other women she describes, vindictive. He also said to remember that she is weary … I must also try to remember that she is a voice in someone else’s head, a disembodied voice.”
Synopsis
Eh Joe is the complete antithesisAntithesis
Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition...
to ... but the clouds ... in which a man strains nightly to evoke the image of a woman with little success. Like O in Film, Joe has gone through his routine, doing what he feels he needs to do to protect himself and like the man in Film he is sitting quietly thinking he is safe. But he is not. It is not a face he finds watching himself but a voice he hears, a woman’s voice. As the voice progresses we move closer and closer to Joe.
To Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider was an American theatre director and mentor responsible for more than 100 theatre productions. In 1984 he was honored with a Drama Desk Special Award for serving a wide range of playwrights...
, Beckett wrote on 7 April 1966: "Voice should be whispered. A dead voice in his head. Minimum of colour. Attacking. Each sentence a knife going in, pause for withdrawal, then in again."
36” – The voice wants to know if Joe has checked everything. Why is he still sitting there with the light on? Why doesn’t he go to bed? He’s changed the covers.
32” – She reminds him that he’d told her that the best was still to come but that it was the last thing he did say to her as he hurried her into her coat and bundled her out the door.
28” – She is not the first voice that has come to him like this, in his mind; although the woman hints that the source may be external. His father’s voice came to him for years until Joe found a way to stop him talking, to metaphorically throttle him, then his mother and finally, others, “[a]ll the others”, everyone it seems who ever loved him.
24” – She asks if there is anyone left who might love him. He’s reduced to paying for sex, once a week. She warns him to be careful he doesn’t run out of people to take advantage of because then there would only be him left to adore him until he too died. She assures him that she is not in heaven and not to expect to go there himself.
20” – The woman recalls one time the two of them were together. It was summer, they were sitting together on the grass watching the ducks, holding hands and exchanging vows. He’d complimented her on her elocution
Elocution
Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone.-History:In Western classical rhetoric, elocution was one of the five core disciplines of pronunciation, which was the art of delivering speeches. Orators were trained not only on proper diction, but on the proper...
and she remarks how well he used to express himself. Now, like he did with his parents and the others, he has “[s]queezed her down to this”, the slow monotonous drone we hear. She knows her time is limited and wonders when all she will have left is a whisper. She lashes out at him and asks him to imagine if he never managed to rid himself of her until he died and was with her in death himself.
16”– Joe has been a religious man. She wants to know if he’s as righteous as he used to profess to be. She quotes from the parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
about the rich man and says one day God will talk to him like she is doing and, when he does, it’ll be time for him to die.
12” – Joe had said that the best was to come. She tells him that, for her at least, it did. She found someone far better than he was and lists off all the ways.
8” – She did all right. “But there was one didn’t.” One of Joe’s other loves, a young, slim, pale girl did not fare so well. He said the same thing to her that the best was yet to come, just as he did with Voice, as he bundled the girl out the door with no intention of furthering the relationship now he’d got what he wanted from her. In fact his aeroplane ticket was in his pocket ready for him to make good his escape. The timeline is unclear but the likelihood is that his relationship with Voice came first.
4” – She wants to know if Joe knew what happened to her, if she’d told him. Of course she hadn’t. The first he’d heard about it was an announcement in the Independent. Joe tries harder to throttle the voice. She knows her time is short and begins to goad him. “Mud thou art,” she tells him – more commonly heard as “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” – Genesis 3:19.
0” – The woman proceeds to tell him what exactly happened to the girl he abandoned. Voice describes her going down to the sea close to her house wearing only her lavender slip
Slip (clothing)
Slip is a woman's undergarment worn beneath a dress or skirt to help it hang smoothly and to prevent chafing of the skin from coarse fabrics such as wool...
where she attempts to drown herself but it doesn’t work. The girl returns to the house, sopping wet, fetches a razor – the make Joe recommended to her – goes back down the garden, this time to the viaduct
Viaduct
A viaduct is a bridge composed of several small spans. The term viaduct is derived from the Latin via for road and ducere to lead something. However, the Ancient Romans did not use that term per se; it is a modern derivation from an analogy with aqueduct. Like the Roman aqueducts, many early...
, where she also fails to slit her wrists. She tears a strip of silk from her slip and ties it round the scratch. She goes back to the house and this time gets some tablets. She takes a few on her way back down the garden. When she reaches the viaduct she decides to head further down near the Rock and takes some more on the way. When she reaches the spot she empties the tube and lies down in the end with her face a few feet from the – presumably incoming – tide.
At this point Beckett added the following instruction, which is not included in the printed text: “Eyes remember.”
Joe makes a concerted effort at this point and the woman’s voice drops to a whisper. She makes Joe imagine the girl lying there, describing events in erotic terms: “… part the lips … solitaire … Breasts in the stones …Imagine the hands … What are they fondling? … There’s love for you …” Another change Beckett made here was to add in a greater degree of repetition, particularly the word “imagine” emphasising that what we are hearing here is primarily a work of imagination rather than simple recollection.
The voice falls silent and the image fades out. Joe has finally rid himself of her. As his face vanishes we realise he is smiling, an important addition Beckett made to the play but which was never incorporated in the printed text. “Here, for the first time, Joe looks at the camera”. This may not represent a final victory but he has silenced her for now.
Interpretation
Joe does not come across as a particularly likeable man. On the surface he is like many of Beckett’s lonely old men, affected by the effects of the choices he has made, but whereas many have simply ended up where they are by avoiding humanity, Joe has used and discarded it, particularly its women. But does he feel responsible, let alone guilty, for his actions? Either way, something is playing on his mind. The woman’s voice that carps at him acts as if she is “a representation, an exteriorization of Joe’s internal conflict” but the reality is she is “not only the voice of memory, even memory rearranged or juxtaposed, but at least creative if not created memory, that is, memory leaching into imagination or creativity. Were she not, how could he “squeeze away” at her until he finally silences her completely? Beckett was very specific when writing to Alan Schneider: “An inner voice from the past.”In the “version of He Joe directed by Walter Asmus and Beckett, recorded in Germany 1979 … [t]he camera pursues Joe in line with the text’s instructions; but Joe is positioned on the right of the frame, and he does not look at the camera as it moves inexorably closer. The effect is to deepen the ambiguity of the voice’s location; Joe’s posture suggests that the voice is whispering directly into his ear, but the place where the one whispering would normally sit is, the framing constantly reminds us, empty.”
Why a woman though and why this particular woman? “Aspects of consciousness, according to Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, can become almost independent personalities and might even ‘become visible or audible. They appear as visions, they speak in voices which are like the voices of definite people.’” “His protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
represents an aspect of psychological duality, akin to Jung’s Anima or Shadow
Anima (Jung)
The anima and animus, in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, as opposed to both the theriomorphic and inferior-function of the shadow archetypes, as well as the abstract symbol sets that formulate the archetype of the...
. Voice in Eh Joe is less Joe’s dark or evil side than his opposite: feminine, constant, secure and irreligious, to Joe’s masculine, lecherous, dishonest but (surprisingly) religious self,”
There is little material to build a fully rounded character but the woman appears to have been a survivor. Whereas the other one, “[t]he green one” as she calls her, couldn’t bear to live without Joe, the woman whose voice Joe hears made a better life for herself without him. She is the logical choice for Joe’s last surviving accuser. In many respects she is the distillation of all the previous voices, a last gasp, pointing an accusing finger at him on behalf of herself and all the others, particularly the suicide. In doing so 'he finds that hell is not only other people but himself'.
We learn nothing about why his mother or father might trouble him after their deaths but disapproving or disappointed parents are plentiful enough throughout Beckett’s work. Joe suffers his father’s ‘ghost’ for years until he realises that he can affect it, that by an act of will he can stop the words, to make the literally dead also figuratively dead. In a letter sent to MacGreevy on 6 April 1965, Beckett writes: "I shake at the thought of the ordeal you have been through. At least you are through it. You mustn't give up. Putting down memories is enough to make anyone crack." This is what Beckett means by the expression “All your dead dead,” those ‘ghosts’ that he has exorcised in this way. This is reminiscent of the following lines from The Expelled:
- Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, or those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don't there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little. That is to say, you must think of them for a while, a good while, every day several times a day, until they sink forever in the mud. That's an order.
“The play is full of verbs conveying what Joe’s voice describes as ‘mental thuggee
Thuggee
Thuggee is the term for a particular kind of murder and robbery of travellers in South Asia and particularly in India.They are sometimes called Phansigar i.e...
’: throttle, muzzle, spike, squeeze, tighten, silence, garrotte, finish, mum, strangle, stamp out, exterminate, still, kill, lay, choke.” “’It is his passion to kill the voices which he cannot kill,’ said Beckett.”
The religious subtext did not exist in the earliest drafts. Beckett incorporated it after a two-week break in working on the play. He makes Joe a Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
(as the prayer to Mary
Mary (mother of Jesus)
Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...
suggests) and, as the Catholic Church views suicide as a mortal sin
Mortal sin
Mortal sins are in the theology of some, but not all Christian denominations wrongful acts that condemn a person to Hell after death. These sins are considered "mortal" because they constitute a rupture in a person's link to God's saving grace: the person's soul becomes "dead", not merely weakened...
, how would Joe feel if he thought he might be even indirectly responsible for this? This, of course, brings up the whole issue of Catholic guilt
Catholic guilt
Catholic guilt is a term used to identify the supposed excess guilt felt by Catholics and lapsed Catholics. It is a concept that many non-Catholics have, partly based on a strict definition of sacraments by Martin Luther that diminished the role of Confession in many Protestant Churches and on the...
. An omission in all printed versions is the capitalization in the expression, “The passion of our Joe,” which Beckett wanted to read – though of course it makes no difference to the performance – “The passion of Our Joe.”
It has been suggested that Joe is actually masturbating while all this is going on – and some of Voice’s remarks do, not unreasonably, attack his current level of sexual prowess – but scholars tend to skim over the imagery used in the final section of Voice’s diatribe so it is difficult to give anything more than a speculative interpretation. Beckett certainly has not shied away from the subject (it appears in Mercier and Camier
Mercier and Camier
Mercier and Camier is a novel by Samuel Beckett.Written immediately before his celebrated 'trilogy' of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, Mercier et Camier was Beckett's first attempt at extended prose fiction in French...
for example) but there is a danger of reading too much into Beckett rather than just enough.
Stage Productions
All of Beckett’s theatrical work is readily available to the general public apart from the television plays. In an attempt to introduce audiences theatre directors have sought means to translate the works from one medium to another within the bounds of tolerance of the Beckett Foundation. The CanadianCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
filmmaker Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan, OC is a critically acclaimed Armenian-Canadian stage director and film director. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with Exotica...
successfully premiered a version of Eh Joe at the Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre
The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists...
in Dublin in April 2006 featuring Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon
Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...
as Joe with Penelope Wilton
Penelope Wilton
Penelope Alice Wilton, OBE is an English actress.-Life and career:Penelope Alice Wilton was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, to a former actress mother and a businessman father. She is a niece of actors Bill Travers and Linden Travers and a cousin of the actor Richard Morant...
as Voice. Karen Fricker wrote in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
:
- “Egoyan's answer is to mix the media: a live camera just offstage is trained on Michael Gambon's face, and the image is projected on to a scrim in front of the playing area. This not only delivers the text, but adds fresh nuances: the motionlessness of Gambon's body contrasts ironically and pathetically with the emotions (defiance, boredom, regret, fatigue, anger) playing across that amazing, expressive, baggy face.
- “The darkness of the theatre and most of the playing area, and the sheer size of the projected image of Gambon's face – it fills nearly the whole height of the prosceniumProsceniumA proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch , which is located at or near the front of the stage...
– create an atmosphere of near-unbearable intensity, like living inside someone else's filthy conscience.
- “Its excellence makes a crucial point in the current atmosphere of centenary reverence: that new interpretive strategies are not a threat, but in fact bring new life to the work.”
Gambon subsequently reprised the role in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and was due to appear at the Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival is Australia's largest and most attended annual cultural event running every January since it was first held in 1977. Its program features around 80 events including contemporary and classical music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and artist talks...
in January 2007 for a special Beckett Season but had to pull out due to personal reasons. He was replaced by Charles Dance
Charles Dance
Walter Charles Dance, OBE is an English actor, screenwriter and director. Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains. His most famous roles are Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown , Dr Clemens, the doctor of penitentiary Fury 161, who becomes Ellen Ripley's confidante in Alien 3 ,...
.
In July 2008 Egoyan's production played New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
with Wilton still as Voice, now joined by Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...
as Joe.
A less noteworthy staged interpretation was created by actor/director Cradeaux Alexander at the Kraine Theatre in his 2000 reworking which removed the old man completely from the proceedings, divided the woman's speech between three actresses and an actor leaving the audience to stand in as the beleaguered Joe. Among other things, the audience isn't Joe and doesn't share his history. Without him present to convey his guilt they are merely eavesdroppers. The performance also incorporated seventies disco music and male nudity. In interview, Alexander had this to say:
- “That production caused a huge stirring, some absolutely despising what I’d done with it and others absolutely loving it – and from that point on I knew I was on the right track. I was even threatened with legal action by the Beckett Foundation if I continued with it! This of course only caused me to fortify my resolve.”http://www.archives.scene4.com/may-2005/html/kapsaskimay05.html
Eh Joe is the fourth and final play in a collection of short Beckett plays at the New York Theatre Workshop
New York Theatre Workshop
__notoc__New York Theatre Workshop is an Off-Broadway theatre noted for its productions of new works. Located at 79 East 4th Street between Second Avenue and the Bowery in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it houses a 198-seat theatre for its mainstage productions, and a...
directed by JoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov is a Soviet and American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974...
and featuring new music by Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
. The quartet, which started performances in December 2007, begins with Act Without Words I
Act Without Words I
Act Without Words I is a short play by Samuel Beckett. It is a mime, Beckett's first . Like many of Beckett's works, the play was originally written in French , being translated into English by Beckett himself...
, Act Without Words II
Act Without Words II
Act Without Words II is a short mime play by Samuel Beckett, his second . Like many of Beckett's works, the piece was originally composed in French , then translated into English by Beckett himself. Written in the late fifties it opened at the Calderon Press Institute in Oxford and was directed by...
and Rough for Theatre I
Rough for Theatre I
Rough for Theatre I is a one-act theatrical sketch by Samuel Beckett. Also known simply as Theatre I it began life originally in French in the late fifties as Fragment de théâtre and was later translated into English by Beckett himself. The first production was at the Schiller Theatre, Hamburg in...
before finishing with Eh Joe. Karen Kandel plays the Voice. Coincidentally, the New York Theatre Workshop and the aforementioned Kraine Theatre are in adjacent buildings on the theatre-rich Fourth Street Arts Block between Second Avenue and the Bowery
Bowery
Bowery may refer to:Streets:* The Bowery, a thoroughfare in Manhattan, New York City* Bowery Street is a street on Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y.In popular culture:* Bowery Amphitheatre, a building on the Bowery in New York City...
in Manhattan. http://www.nytw.org/beckett_info.asp