This dramaticule is Samuel Beckett’s most recent play and his shortest to date, written at a time when his prose is also appearing in a highly condensed form. In spite of its brevity it contains a poignancy and a directness that puts it on a level with his longer drama, and it requires a precision of acting and direction that is not easily found.
The illustrations are taken from the first Berlin production, directed by Derek Mendel, but Come and Go, which unlike most of Mr Beckett’s plays was written in English, has also been played at the Théâtre de France with Madeleine Renaud in the cast.
Hugh Kenner, in the revised edition of his famous book on Samuel Beckett, has this to say about Come and Go: ‘Three lives are telescoped into three minutes, in a vignette so spare that each of just 121 spoken words is shaped by dozens of words not spoken. Suffused in their disappointment, sustained by their wistful reenactment, braced by their interlinked connivance to withhold from one another intelligence of rumoured agonies, each guilty of having broached the subject on which she must next enjoin reticence, they make of their reticence their lifetime’s finest achievement; and Beckett has very nearly made a play out of silence.’