Three Plays: Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, What Where

by Samuel Beckett

Book by Beckett, Samuel

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Irish Literature

59 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Novels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include Murphy in 1938 and Malone Dies in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as Waiting for Godot in 1952 and Krapp's Last Tape in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.

Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.

People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.

People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".

In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau]

Kind of in the tall grass here - so this review will only address what I was able to take away from the three plays presented here. Ohio Impromptu seems to me a reflection on how we are constantly distracted from authenticity; the Reader and Listener are not able to play their 'roles' due to the constant knocking on the table. As pages turn the knocking distracts - till final page is turned. Catastrophe is a horrific example of image instead of substance; a McLuhanian warning about a medium with no message. What Where is very difficult to categorize; Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat as agents of the Inquistion. I could be way off here - Beckett is one of the most challenging writers I have ever encountered.

[Cody]

“Where do you think we are? In Patagonia?”

Ah, ‘Catastrophe’ is in the clutch of favorite Sam I carry.

[Sam Griffin]

“So the sad tale a last time told they sat on as though turned to stone. Through the single window dawn shed no light. From the street no sound of reawakening. Or was it that buried in who knows what thoughts they paid no heed? To light of day. To sound of reawakening. What thoughts who knows. Thoughts, no, not thoughts. Profounds of mind. Of mindlessness. Whither no light can reach. No sound. So sat on as though turned to stone. The sad take a last time told.
[pause]
Nothing is left to tell”

A play that can be read aloud in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette, Ohio Impromptu always remains the most moving piece of theatre I have ever read. One of Beckett’s lesser known masterpieces

[Naeem Nedaee]

Ohio Impromptu: Little is left to say!
Catastrophe: I forget.
What Where: Is that all?

[Alan]

I read Catastrophe out of this set so my review is purely on that.

This is probably my favourite Beckett so far. This was superb. Beckett wasn't a writer who talked politically often at all. This, however, took a very political stance against the concept of a totalitarian society through the director. The assistant is just as oppressed as the performer who stands motionless on stage for 99% of the play thus showing arts transgression from the medium of the artist.

The ending was just so very very very clever. Beckett offers us hope against this political tyranny but puts the small movement in perspective with the oppressive stance patriarchy holds.

[Zach]

Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, and What Where are three brief meditations on what it means to struggle with existence, with meaning, and with the other. One's cognitive powers must be at their most expansively metaphorical to see clearly in the stark worlds that Beckett creates in this triptych of plays. A profound, transcendent pleasure.

[Τρύφωνας Γέσιος-Κρανιώτης]

Ohio Impromptu 4/5
Catastrophe 4/5
What Where 3/5

[Nashi]

This review will be on Catastrophe rather than the rest of the plays since I've only tackled Catastrophe. I'm a bit embarrased to be rating Catastrophe this low or at least, lower than Waiting for Godot since my professor absolutely loved Catastrophe but I'm a sucker for Waiting for Godot. Now, Catastrophe was an interesting work but it didn't quite pull me as much since well, it's quite small. It's definitely a feat of Beckett to be able to put depth into such a minimalistic play which I'm impressed of Beckett to manage to make something so minimalistic and still add depth to it.

We tackled it in class by recreating the play and I enjoyed it and I felt that my professor managed to capture the themes perfectly through even emphasizing the experience that the actors aka my colleagues sensed. Beckett, I'm sure would be proud because it managed to resonate loudly with several of us in class.

This work, I'm not sure I would read/watch but I'm always open to never saying no.

[Ana]

I have only read 'Catastrophe' out of the three (in preparation for a Masters project), but will persevere to return to 'Ohio Impromptu' and 'What Where' later on tonight.

Most of the discussion that I have seen on 'Catastrophe' is that it is unique, on behalf of Beckett, for its unusual political commentary, which is indeed true. But we shouldn't merely value 'Catastrophe' for its odd placement in the Beckett canon. It is also a great dramatic work that is invested in the idea of observation and is one of Beckett's most explicit placements of an audience as voyeurs, as dubious witnesses to a dictatorship, as watchers trapped in the resin that is immobility. I really enjoy Beckett's later works, not only for their compactness, but also for their increasing attention to constructions of an audience.

[Emily]

Preface that I only read Catastrophe out of the three, for my Playwriting class.

Second time reading this and it’s just as good the second time around! On the surface it just looks like a play about a director being kinda shitty to his assistant, technician, and actor by being so asinine about every little detail. When taking your time to think about it, it can be interpreted in any kind of way. I read it as being about the oppression and dehumanization of the protagonist - the Everyman, and how oppression can trickle down; from the top of the pecking order, to the middle man, to the Everyman.

[Andrew Pitkin]

'Ohio Impromptu' is a decent playlet, though one Beckett himself wasn't proud of because he was called to order to write the thing in celebration of his 75th Birthday. One of the central themes seems to concern Memory and Nostalgia - perhaps that we can't share memory with anyone after a certain age. It's an experimental playlet, and like most of Beckett's post-1950's writing, it defies stable interpretation.

*
'Catastrophe' is a play purportedly set in a post-apocalyptic world, or one of Beckett's various "skull-scapes." IT's about censorship and imprisonment. It's not a terribly interesting play, to be honest.

*
'What Where' is a playlet I have written on elsewhere.

[tess anna snider]

What

[An Nguyễn]

The pleasure of reading Beckett's plays, of imagining cleverly and precisely created visual effects and sounds and voice and attitude of the actors that are carrying his metaphorical world..

[Jennifer]

Weird, but I'm keeping it in case we need to put on plays during the apocalypse (which is definitely coming).

[Shai Kauffman]

Very difficult to understand

[Musico-Cinephile]

There's nothing left to say... is that all? I forget...

[Katie]

● 'D: So so. (Pause.) Why the plinth? A: To let the stalls see the feet.'

[Matti Thompson]

I only read Ohio impromptu and it’s truly amazing