UMO Ensemble brings back its physical theater homage to Samuel Beckett in an encore run of “Fail Better” at ACT Theatre.
During last year’s successful citywide Samuel Beckett Festival, numerous Seattle theater troupes presented stagings of the prominent Irish author’s plays, stories and radio dramas.
UMO Ensemble, the inventive Vashon Island-based movement-theater company, offered something different. Unable to get the rights to some Beckett texts in mind, it created “Fail Better,” a lauded kinetic homage to the existential themes this originator of theatrical absurdism pondered in his starkly poetic and resonant works.
According to a Seattle Times review by Nancy Worssam, the agile UMO performers “climbed ropes, swung from them, balanced on a teeter-totter, made love on that adult seesaw, and dragged heavy human burdens. It was a visual delight and an intellectual teaser.” The result, she wrote, was “a mesmerizing production, one that gave its audience the sense that they had indeed entered the world of Beckett, if not into his mind itself.”
UMO has returned to ACT Theatre with an encore of “Fail Better.” Directed by Elizabeth Kolb, the 60-minute piece runs through April 26 at ACT, 700 Union St., Seattle; $30 (206-292-7676 or acttheatre.org)