Stumped – Bewley’s Café Theatre, Dublin

Writer: Shomit Dutta

Director: Bairbre Ni Chaoimh

What would two Nobel prize winning playwrights talk about if they were watching a cricket game? Imagine Beckett and Pinter waiting their turn to take part in an amateur match in the depths of the Cotswolds and that’s the plot of ‘Stumped’ by Shomit Dutta. This premise on which the play is based is somewhat absurd, and therefore fitting for the playwrights involved whose works often highlight the absurdity of existence.

Barry McGovern convinces as a slightly irascible Beckett who, nervy about his approaching batting role in the game, is simultaneously keeping a tab on the score and the players while admonishing his dawdling teammate, Pinter, played by Michael James Ford, to ‘pad up’. Watching a game of cricket doesn’t rate highly with many people but, prepare to be entertained. In the first act, the audience is watching the two playwrights watch a game of substandard cricket and this unfolds as an homage to Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and Pinter’s ‘The Dumb Waiter’. The two characters engage in verbal sparring rather than conversation and their clever interchange, adroitly delivered by McGovern and Ford, is the backbone of this play. The play is devoid of action other than waiting; waiting to go onto the pitch and, in the second act, waiting for a lift home. In the second act, Beckett and Pinter wander in a state of post-match inebriation, rehashing Pinter’s terrible deeds at the crease and, as the play quickens to an unresolved conclusion, a menacing shape looms in the twilight, again mirroring scenarios in plays of the two protagonists.

McGovern and Ford convey the brilliance and humanity of Beckett and Pinter. It’s intriguing to see such giants of the theatre portrayed as ordinary, aging mortals, anxious about a lift home and with a penchant for weak tea and cricket. Their repartee of quick paced, witty one liners is testimony to Dutta’s deft comic writing and Bairbre Ni Chaoimh’s assured direction.

This intelligently crafted play will whet your appetite to reread the works of these two acclaimed playwrights. Bring along your literary friend and keep check on who scores the most hits of quotes from and allusions to plays by Beckett, Pinter and Shakespeare with extra points for any Latin quote translated.

Runs Until August 19th 2023.