Shhh!: Whisper cycle in John Crowley’s rendition of Samuel Beckett’s Come and Go

Abstract

Samuel Beckett’s Come and Go (1965) is about three women whose conversations are both audible and inaudible due to each one’s whispering whenever two of them are alone and the other is out of sight. This paper focuses on the film version of Come and Go – directed by John Crowley in 2000 – as part of the Beckett on Film project, which transferred Beckett’s 19 stageplays to the screen. Drawing upon Mladen Dolar’s theorization of the object voice, this paper aims to analyse how Crowley renders Beckett accessible for contemporary audiences in cinematic terms, with a specific focus on the whisper scenes.