Irish Examiner View: London audiences' turn to enjoy outstanding Irish production

Gare St Lazare's production of 'How It Is (Part 2)' earned rave reviews when performed pre-Covid in The Everyman in 2019.

London theatre audiences get a rare treat for the next fortnight when a show which had its world premiere at Cork’s Everyman turns up for a fortnight’s run.

Gare St Lazare, who are viewed as among the world’s leading exponents of Beckett, are staging their performances of How It Is (Part 2) starring accomplished actors Stephen Dillane and Conor Lovett. 

It earned a five-star review from the Irish Examiner when performed pre-Covid in the MacCurtain St venue in 2019. They will be joined by the Irish Gamelan Orchestra and director and designer Judy Hegarty Lovett.

Beckett’s last prose work How It Is (Part 1), which also opened at The Everyman, in 2018, saw an unnamed narrator in a landscape of mud and darkness with only a sack of tins and a tin opener, as he recounts a journey towards a fellow traveller, Pim. In Part 2, he is with Pim when a brief honeymoon period ends with violence.

Back then, we wrote: “The spine tingles... Dillane and Lovett are once again compelling in their symbiosis... there is no sense of confusion, rather a feeling that somehow we are nearer to the essence of what it is to be human.” 

And that is the quote the London theatre is using on its billboard.