Claire Booth's Mouth Steals Show in Beckett Play

Soprano Claire Booth delivers a compelling performance as a disembodied, animated mouth in Rufus Norris's production of Samuel Beckett's short play "Not I," staged at the Minghella Theatre in Reading as part of the 2026 Beckett Biennale. The production, set on the Reading University campus, features a three-part program that includes Luciano Berio's experimental "Sequenza III," performed by Booth, and a trio of short films exploring Samuel Beckett's connection to Folkestone, where he married in 1961. These introductory elements, however, are presented as preamble to the main dramatic event.

The central focus of the production is Booth's portrayal of the mouth, which is isolated against a black background. This performance is described as arresting in its speed and urgency, conveying the racing thoughts of a desperate woman grappling with her life's narrative. Booth effectively captures the character's fragmented interior self and the rapid pace of desperation as she replays moments from birth up to a potential moment of death at age 70, situated in a field among cowslips. The performance utilizes stuttering repetitions and verbal hiccups to suggest a life that has been difficult, loveless, and undermining, yet underscores an insistent need to articulate these experiences aloud.

Despite the academic setting of the theatre, Norris's direction avoids a "dusty or donnish" feel, instead presenting a production that is both strange and deeply moving. Booth's vocal and physical performance is key to this, embodying the character's racing brain and the split consciousness that attempts to reconcile past experiences with the present moment. The play's structure, with its emphasis on a single, disembodied voice, forces the audience to confront the raw act of speaking and the profound emotional weight carried by words, even when syntax breaks down.

Luciano Berio's "Sequenza III," performed by Booth prior to the Beckett play, serves as a musical companion piece. Its stuttering repetitions, gasps, and throat-clearings are seen to foreshadow and resonate with the dramatic elements of "Not I." This musical prelude, along with the films detailing Beckett's personal history, aims to contextualize the play, though the review suggests the core dramatic impact of Booth's mouth performance stands powerfully on its own. The production, therefore, offers a layered experience, combining experimental music, biographical context, and a singular, intense theatrical performance that explores the limits of language and the enduring human impulse to communicate.