PING

Hillary Finch | The Times, 29.03.13

(...) the first half of the evening offers a new angle on human distress in the UK premiere of Ping by the young Portuguese composer, Vasco Mendonça. This is a musical response to Samuel Beckett’s dramatic monologue: a white-on-white cameo of consciousness, its language bleached into both panic and stasis by rhythm and repetition.

Beckett seems to be everywhere at the moment: both Cheltenham and Edinburgh will feature his work this summer. And composers are increasingly drawn to counterpoint his verbal music with their own. Mendonça does it with a small ensemble, dominated by the shudders of viola and cello, and the melancholy of bass clarinet and marimba. Michael McCarthy’s production has actor Nia Roberts separated by a gauze from her alter ego, the soprano Helen-Jane Howells. They share Beckett’s text like the shifting light of an unstable psyche: both give superb performances, complemented by an electronic score and a stuttering monochrome video projection by Sandro Aguilar. Just two more shows: be sure to be there.