Hugh B. O’Brien: a tribute
Three Beckett plays tonight, and three episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is grossly unfair; at this rate we will be clear of Beckett before we’re a tenth of the way through the 186, or something like that, episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The C4 adaptation of Beckett’s Rough for Theatre II features an all-star cast of Jim Norton, Timothy Spall, and Hugh B. O’Brien, a.k.a., respectively, Bishop Brennan from Father Ted, Rosencrantz from Brannagh’s Hamlet, and some other bloke you’ve never heard of. But what does that matter, when all he does is stand in a fecking window and die?
In the playground today there was a four year-old boy with some sort of handheld video game, standing motionless but for his thumbs, which tapped like those of a WWII (not ”Wii”) morse operator, eyes flickering like fireflies, with two other kids hanging on his shoulders watching, when they could all have been eating soil and fighting like boys ought to. Even though I carried the day morally, the boy’s mother beamed on, adoringly, wallowing in the wrongness of the situation.
Or did they use other digits for morse, in WWII, their index fingers, or their ring fingers, or some combination of the four?
This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 12:17 AM and filed under New stuff. Trackbacks are closed.
The best thing about Beckett on film is Jeremy Ions in a silly white wig doing “Ohio Impromptu.”
Posted on 29-Dec-06 at 6:24 am | PermalinkDuring the war I believe the index finger was the digit of choice. These days kids are exercising their thumbs to such a degree that they have become titans in the sport of thumb wrestling (so dads, please settle disputes with your children using the tried and tested red Hands game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hands and don’t be tempted to take them on at thumb wrestling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumb_wrestling or you will lose embarrassingly quickly).
Posted on 02-Jan-07 at 4:34 am | Permalinkae: I’m saving that special treat for last. Jeremy Ions, is he a sci-fi character?
Robbo: tell me about it. It’s reached the point where I’m looking over my shoulder in public places, wary of being thumb-wrestled to within an inch of my life by baying parricidal urchins.
Posted on 03-Jan-07 at 11:43 am | PermalinkMenace: Yes, I think Jeremy Ions was in that futuristic thing with Plasma Anderson? He played a Welsh lifeguard called Dai Hard.
Posted on 04-Jan-07 at 1:58 am | Permalink