From Samuel Beckett at the Barbican’s Pit and Pinter at the Gate, to The Musical of Musicals – the Musical! at the Sound and Lucky Nurse at the Finborough, brevity is the soul of the party (if not always of wit). There’s no danger, at least, of these shows outstaying their welcome (though The Musical of Musicals comes close).
Beckett provides powerful poetic images – a woman rocking herself (to death?) in a chair – and Pinter a bracing pair of sparely-written mysteries (what is it like to awake from a 29 year sleep? Who is the odd match-seller that has set up at the end of the garden?). Lucky Nurse is a captivating collection of four musical miniatures by Michael John LaChiusa, one of America’s most prolific theatrical composers but whose work is hardly known over here. Only The Musical of Musicals – that exploits a simple idea, to re-tell a basic plot in the style of five different composers five times over — runs thin.
But while the 40-minute running time of the Beckett evening hardly makes for a full night out, there’s something appealing about knowing that you’re not stuck with the same crowd for too long. “90 minutes, no interval” is one of the happiest signs a theatre critic can see. Mind you, Beckett’s Breath – that runs for a couple of minutes – is probably a little too short. A colleague once told me that she was rummaging around in her handbag when it started, and missed it entirely as a result.
