BWW Reviews: UMO's FAIL BETTER Certainly Does That

We've had quite a few things come from The Seattle Beckett Fest and possibly the most "interesting" has come from UMO with their "Fail Better" over at ACT. And by "interesting" I mean it in my Mom's sense of the word as in "I have no idea what just happened, didn't care for it, but I'm trying to be polite".

I should say I'm not a fan of performance art. And from the description of the show I did not expect that's what I was getting. What I thought I was getting was an exploration of Beckett's characters, themes and prose through movement, rope tricks and acrobatics. But since the Beckett estate only allowed them to use two paragraphs from "The Unnamable" the rest of the hour they filled up with their own words and the occasional bit of clowning and rope tricks that did not feed into the tone Beckett at all. On the contrary it seemed more like Pinter since there were so many pauses and lots of staring at the audience.

If you're going to encompass the works of a writer with movement and stunts then have some kind of story to tell. In this respect they lived up to their own title and failed better. It was really just more of a self indulgent evening where they felt they could boil Beckett down into some pretentious phrases mashed together but Beckett's complex and rich works cannot be boiled down and certainly deserve better than this.

Yes, there were a few rope routines. Two to be exact. Janet McAlpin and Terry Crane managed some thrilling routines, especially Crane whose routine was one of the few bright spots of the show. And there were some mildly amusing bits with a large teeter-totter but that got old pretty quick. Beyond that, the encompassing time was filled with a lot of literary and emotional masturbation from writers Maria Glanz and Lyam White and confusingly put together from director Elizabeth Klob with a little bit of Beckett thrown in.

So no, nothing here honored Beckett or his work. This was many of the things I dislike about performance art that it's more for the artists and less for the audience. And so with McAlpin and Crane's routines aside, I have to give "Fail Better" the dreaded WTF with my three letter rating system. Without that solid through line, they just left me sitting there in confusion wondering where my evening went.

"Fail Better" from UMO performs at ACT through November 23rd. For tickets or information contact the ACT box office at 206-292-7676 or visit them online at www.acttheatre.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.