Bill Irwin Brings Samuel Beckett to Life in 'On Beckett'

There are few theatrical experiences quite like watching a genius discuss another genius, and that is precisely what Shakespeare Theatre Company is offering DC audiences with On Beckett, the captivating one-man show conceived and performed by Tony Award-winning actor Bill Irwin, playing at the Klein Theatre through March 15.

On Beckett presented by Shakespeare Theatre Company at Klein Theatre

Irwin, known to Broadway audiences for his celebrated turn in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and to generations of children as Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street, has spent a lifetime in quiet devotion to the Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. On Beckett is the beautiful result of that lifelong love affair — a 90-minute, no-intermission journey through Beckett's extraordinary body of work, drawing from plays and prose including Waiting for Godot and Texts for Nothing, delivered with equal parts intellectual rigor and irresistible charm.

What makes the evening so remarkable is Irwin's rare dual identity as both a serious, classically trained actor and a world-class clown. Those two seemingly contradictory skills converge perfectly in Beckett's world, where comedy and tragedy are so deeply intertwined that separating them would be a kind of violence against the work. Irwin understands this instinctively, and his physical precision — an arched eyebrow, a tentative tiptoe, a perfectly timed sag — gives flesh and blood to Beckett's famously abstract language. Where the words might otherwise feel remote or academic, Irwin's body provides ballast, making the abstractions not just understandable but deeply felt.

The stage at the Klein is intentionally sparse — little more than a podium, a bench, and a collection of hats. It is in those hats, particularly the bowler, that Irwin finds some of the evening's most delightful theatrical territory. He demonstrates how the humble bowler hat, so central to Waiting for Godot, actually shapes a character's accent, posture, and rhythm, and how slipping into baggy pants and oversized shoes can help an actor cross a threshold into a Beckett character that no amount of intellectual analysis alone could achieve. Critics have been particularly enchanted by a moment in which Irwin describes his own push-pull relationship with Beckett's work — and then lets his feet and legs perform the metaphor, sliding and gliding as if magnetically drawn back to that waiting bowler hat in a piece of mime that is both hilarious and strangely moving.

Throughout the evening, Irwin never condescends to his audience. He trusts that the people in the room are capable of meeting Beckett where he lives, and he guides them there gently, through anecdote, biography, and demonstration rather than dry explication. He makes clear that Beckett's plays are not cold academic exercises but urgent, political, and even violent works — alive with passion and a fierce engagement with the human condition. His performance of Lucky's climactic monologue from Waiting for Godot, in which a character who seems little more than a beast of burden suddenly erupts into a torrent of thought, has been called a stunning tour de force, the kind of moment that reminds you why live theatre exists.

Audiences who have packed the Klein Theatre have responded with rousing ovations, and it's not hard to understand why. On Beckett offers something that is increasingly rare in contemporary theatre: genuine intellectual companionship. Irwin is not performing so much as sharing — inviting you into a conversation between two extraordinary artistic minds, one living and one gone, and making you feel, by the end of the evening, that you know both of them a little better than you did when you arrived. Whether you are a devoted Beckett scholar or someone who has never encountered his work before, the pure joy of watching Bill Irwin do what only Bill Irwin can do is more than enough reason to make your way to 7th Street before March 15th.

On Beckett is presented by Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Michael R. Klein Theatre, 450 7th Street NW, Washington, DC. The show runs approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.