Famous Play about Elderly is Revived on London Stage

There's not much drama about older people or about the inevitability of death. One exception is Samuel Beckett, a Dubliner who spent most of his writing life in Paris. He gain literary fame for 'Waiting for Godot' and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

His play, All That Fall, about the relationship between an older man and woman opened recently on London’s Jermyn Street Theatre.

Beckett’s play was written for radio and broadcast by the BBC in 1957. This performance is the first time Beckett’s estate has permitted it to be shown onstage, according to The Week with The First Post.

The play showcases actors Maddy, an elderly woman going to meet her blind husband Dan at the train station after work. Returning home, Maddy begins to suspect that Dan may have committed a terrible crime.

The critics have giving thumbs up to the production. One reviewer praised the production of Beckett’s most Irish and accessible play, writing about the old man: the actor conveys "the tetchiness, sadness and sorrow, as well as occasional bawdiness of old age", without diminishing our laughter. "Beckett at his most beguiling."

Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph, wrote that the performance "mingles comic relief with moments of desperate grief". Another critic noted that the play was soporifically slow at times, "yet it's a worthy relic that we are unlikely to see staged again".

Theatrical productions are favorites at Assisted Living and Continuing Care Residences.