How It Is (Part 2)

(This is a past event and is no longer running)

Written by
Samuel Beckett

Produced by
Gare St Lazare Ireland and The Coronet Theatre in association with The Everyman (Cork)

Directed and Designed by
Judy Hegarty Lovett

Thursday 28th April: Post Show Discussion with the Cast and Director included with admission.

“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.” – Irish Examiner

Exactly two years after originally planned, actors Stephen Dillane, Conor Lovett, and award-winning Irish company Gare St Lazare return to The Coronet Theatre with the UK premiere of How It Is (Part 2), the second stand-alone part of a three part staging of Beckett’s novel, following the success of Part 1 in 2018.

As with all Gare St Lazare work, this production is directed and designed by Judy Hegarty Lovett, with sound designed by their long time collaborator, composer Mel Mercier, and played by Mercier and the 14 member Irish Gamelan Orchestra.

How It Is (Part 2) is both a continuation of (Part 1), and a stand-alone piece in its own right. How It Is (Part 1) 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, repeating his life as he heard it, uttered by another voice. In (Part 2), he is with Pim, and when a brief honeymoon period ends, violence seems the only way to make sense of their bizarre predicament.

For over 20 years, joint artistic directors Judy Hegarty Lovett and Conor Lovett have explored Samuel Beckett’s work, gaining an enviable reputation worldwide for their distinctive stagings of his prose and novels. Originally written in 1961 in French, How It Is (Comment c’est) was Beckett’s last full-length prose work

Praise for How It Is (Part 1):

★★★★ ‘An unflinching exploration of identity and narrative voice’- The Stage
★★★★ ‘Brace yourself for an acutely intense, nigh-on spiritual night at the theatre’- Time Out
★★★★★ ‘A flawless conjunction of acting and staging’- Irish Times

Creative Team

Directed and designed by
Judy Hegarty Lovett

Text performed by
Conor Lovett and Stephen Dillane

Music composed by
Mel Mercier and the Irish Gamelan Orchestra

Music performed by
Mel Mercier, the Irish Gamelan Orchestra, Cathal Roche and Claudia Schwab

Lighting designed by
Simon Bennison

Lighting Assistant and Board Operator
Hanan Sheedy

Producer
Maura O’Keeffe