All That Fall (a play for radio)
by Samuel Beckett
The Bluver Theatre at The Drake
September 5 - 24, 2023
Directed by Tina Brock
Costume Design
Erica Hoelscher
Lighting Design
Shannon Zura
Scenic Design
Dirk Durossette
Sound Design
Andrew Nelson
Technical Director
Tony Clemente
Production Manager
Bob Schmidt
Stage Management
Abby Kastenberg
Postcard
Bill Brock
Photography
Johanna Austin / AustinArt.org
All That Fall Show Image
Jan Saudek @ Flickr.com
2023 Philadelphia Fringe Festival
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“All That Fall, a hilarious and unsettling jaunt to a train station in 1950s Ireland, is expertly staged by Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium in this year’s Fringe, offering laughs right up to gut-punch finish.”
–Emily Schilling, Broad Street Review
“Beckett at his most Irish and accessible… at his most beguiling.”
The Guardian
“…a triumph…for the singular art of Beckett, who always finds the ecstasy in our agony.”
The NY Times
Wednesday – Saturday at 7:00 pm
Sunday Matinees at 2:00 pm
Preview Performances (9/5 & 9/6) – $20
Weeknight Performances – $22
Weekend & Opening Night (09/07) Performances – $25
Join us for a post show Talkback hosted by Toby Zinman on Sunday, September 10th
Springing out of memories of his native Foxrock, near Dublin, All That Fall charts the journey of Maddy Rooney along a country road to the railway station to meet her blind husband off a train. On the course of her travels, she meets a carter, a businessman, a racecourse clerk and a stiffly Protestant spinster. But the train she has come to meet is detained. When it finally arrives, we uncover the train’s mysterious delay.
First broadcast by the BBC in January 1957, All That Fall is a model in the combined use of sound, music, and speech. The play’s mythic side, its sense of eternity within the everyday, grows more naturally in our imaginations as the story unfolds.
Join us for this rarely produced feast for the senses. Blindfolds provided, and optional.
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Director's Notes
Welcome!
Samuel Beckett described his radio play All That Fall as “... a text written to come out of the dark.”
In considering Beckett’s (play for radio) at this time in our history, it does indeed feel like we’re coming out of the dark. This story resonated for many reasons post-pandemic, particularly the journey of reorienting our lives, our relationships, and our artistic aspirations in the theater -- all of which, for many of us, were altered in ways we’re just now coming to understand.
All That Fall follows Maddy Rooney’s journey to the train station to meet her husband on his birthday. She communes and connects directly with nature as her solace, having much less success in interactions with fellow villagers along the way. Re-integration into the workplace and society over past last several years has felt a bit like Maddy’s experience in her mind and body, along the road to the Boghill Station -- exposing lifelong memories, disappointments and accommodations.
If you missed the blindfold basket on your way in, head out to the lobby and grab a mask. We hope you’ll invite your imagination on this journey, allowing Beckett’s language and imagery to lead you where they will. We’d love to hear from you about your “play for radio” experience. As Maddy Rooney tells her husband along the long road home, “Just concentrate on putting one foot before the next or whatever that expression is.” We’re all figuring it out together.
We appreciate you being with us. Gathering to experience the beauty of Beckett is one of the great pleasures for an absurdist theater company. We hope you’ll share this story with friends you meet along the road in the days to come.
Tina Ann Brock
Producing Artistic Director
Broad Street Review
THEATER OF THE ABS(HEARD)
Philly Fringe 2023: IRC presents Samuel Beckett’s All That Fall
Emily Shilling | Sep , 2023 | In THEATER | 3 minute read
Not many people have seen All That Fall; Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) wrote it for radio broadcast. It aired on BBC radio in early 1957; staged productions weren’t allowed by Beckett, and his estate is almost as strict. The workaround, first permitted in 2012 to director Trevor Nunn, is to produce it as if it were being recorded in front of an audience. The actors hold scripts, speaking and creating sound effects into microphones dangling from the ceiling, and the director, sound designer, and actors create something akin to a symphonic performance. It’s a complicated undertaking, and IRC lives up to its reputation for excellence with a flawless, unusual piece of theater in this Fringe Festival production.
A large “ON AIR” sign lights up, and actor and director Tina Ann Brock, as Mrs. Rooney (Maddy), begins her effortful walk to the Boghill train station in rural Ireland. Her shuffling gait is reproduced by cast members rummaging and scraping in two shallow boxes on a prop table, perhaps filled with sand or pebbles. Sound designer Andrew Nelson has risen to the play’s requirements, with the effects helping push the plot as well as forming part of the actors’ jobs. IRC’s set is a grey, 1950s-era sound studio designed by Dirk Durossette and tuned to the spare and gorgeous language of the play.
A sheep’s bleat, followed by a cow’s moo and a rooster’s crow, put us at ease. However, with Beckett, unease is never far off. Tension builds as Maddy, a woman in her 70s beset with infirmities, grumbles her way to meet her blind husband, coming home from a half-day’s work on a Saturday. It’s a lovely day, “but will it hold up?” Maddy is seized with apprehensions; and Brock plays her quickly changing moods with the fluidity of music.
Maddy is late, and as she totters along to the station, she encounters neighbors along the way. She isn’t very nice to them. All of the Boghillians know each other, probably better than they’d like, in the tiny town based on Beckett’s childhood home outside of Dublin. As she passes people’s houses, Maddy comments on the occupants’ lamentable lives.
Along the road, Maddy’s encounters a cart-driver (Bill Rahill), his hinny (mule) refusing to pull a load of dung; a flirtatious bicyclist, Mr. Tyler (Brian McManus), whom she treats with affronted hauteur (in a delightful touch, Mr. Tyler’s script is clipped to a bicycle’s handlebars). Maddy is wroth, accidentally calling him “Mr. Rooney,” and we infer her marriage is cold. Mr. Slocum (Bill Rahill again) gives Maddy a lift in his car, accidentally running over a chicken. At the station, Maddy is curt with Mr. Barrell, the station master (Kevin J. McCann). Brittany Holdahl Donahue is a standout among a terrific ensemble as the ditzy, religious Miss Fitt.
No one wants to talk about why the train is late. When it finally arrives, something about the train journey has shaken Mr. Rooney (Dan), played by John Zak. A veteran IRC actor, Zak brilliantly conveys the jitters beneath Dan’s cantankerous dismissal of Maddy’s questions about what happened. Trying to distract her, he asks what Sunday’s sermon will be. Maddy tells him, “The Lord upholdeth all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down.” After a beat, they erupt in laughter at the irony of it all, and we see a key to their long partnership. It’s an important revelation, and my one quibble with the performance I saw is that the shared laugh seemed brief.
Enter a small boy, Jerry (Elliot Colahan) bringing something Dan dropped at the station. The reason for the train’s delay is revealed, and the “ON AIR” sign goes dark on another top-notch production by IRC, now in its 17th year as Philadelphia’s own theater of the absurd.
WHAT, WHEN, WHERE
All That Fall. By Samuel Beckett. Directed by Tina Ann Brock. $20-$25. Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium. Through September 24, 2023, at the Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake, 302 Hicks Street, Philadelphia. .
ACCESSIBILITY
Masks are optional. The Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake is a wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender restrooms.