“Cascando”, Jermyn Street Theatre
Jeremy Malies in the West End
★
4 September 2025
Poet and travel writer Edward Thomas would speak about how the rhythm of his walking came across in the metre of his verse. As we put on hooded black capes, Gavin Quinn of Dublin-based company Pan Pan invites us to have similar thoughts about this promenade project. We are about to walk for a mile around the Westminster district of St James’s listening through headphones to a new version of Samuel Beckett’s 1963 radio play Cascando.
Photo credit: Greta Zabulyte.
Quinn, who has directed the project, tells us, “You’re anonymous, but you’re also being observed.” And that is where I contend that the production shows little forethought and is unaware of itself and the context. Quinn has underestimated the self-obsessiveness and performative nature of contemporary Londoners and the difficulties they encounter simply getting around this area. People barely registered the sight of 30 or so cowled figures; their text messages were more pressing and there was already equally eccentric behaviour on the streets.
I have just pored over the text and confirmed my suspicions that the backdrop to the slight plot is coastal and maritime with a bare geometry of dunes. The two characters, Opener played by Daniel Reardon and Voice played by Andrew Bennett, talk repeatedly about stark seascapes. Perhaps there are subtleties going over my head? But in view of this one aspect of the text that is unequivocal, I’m puzzled as to why Pan Pan have chosen a route for the walk that is primarily men’s shirt and shoe shops, up-market tobacconists and the back of Fortnum & Mason. I should be interested to know how dramaturg Nicholas Johnson explains the venue choice.
Pan Pan’s 2021 production in London had the audience walking around the Barbican. Again, hardly maritime, but at least the simple brutalist outlines would have gelled with the repeated theme of words coming out of recesses in the mind of Voice.
At the mile mark near Chatham House it’s tempting to break the fourth wall, such as it is, and rescue a Japanese tourist who is making a schoolboy error with the mechanism of his Lime bike. I should not ventriloquize Beckett, but fancy that having seen his writing warped out of its own guise in this way he might approve of such an empathetic gesture.
Usually compliant and possessed of concentration on immersive walking projects, this time I want to examine blue plaques to Gladstone, Lord Derby, and Pitt the Elder. I stumble many times over my cloak (there are no size options when we robe ourselves) until I’m bold enough to tie part of it around me. We have been asked to keep the hood over our heads and look downwards. Others are braver regarding this, but I don’t trust my peripheral vision.
Cascando is an Italian phrase for a decrease in volume. It should be said that the volume level is optimal, for me at least, and the audio aspects are flawless. Sound designer Jimmy Eadie has injected the recording/soundscape with a vintage quality but in a subtle manner. There is an elegiac lushness to his compositions which are played over the speeches by Opener.
“Finish this one … it’s the right one …” says Voice early on of a story that is being written. Well, not for me on this version of this story; it’s never transportive as such pieces have to be. Essentially a pacifist but demonstrating physical courage during his involvement with the French resistance, Beckett would have acknowledged the military truism that an hour of reconnaissance is never an hour wasted. I question whether Quinn walked the route in a truly reflective way and speculated on likely levels of interest from onlookers. And I was confused by the many references to the month of May as this promenade is in September. This was a revival and a trip that I could have done without.
