What Where

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What Where is Samuel Beckett's last play. It was written in 1983 in English, and revised over a three year period for separate stage and television productions in French and German.

[edit] Synopsis

Four characters (Bam, Bom, Bim, and Bem) appear at intervals, all dressed in the same grey gown with the same long grey hair. Bam controls and interrogates the others, sending them off to be tortured (given "the works") in order to confess to an unnamed crime that he, in turn, places on all of them. A seasonal cycle from spring to winter passes in the course of the play, with Bam repeating the same questions and actions: eventually Bom, Bim, and Bem have interrogated each other at least once, and the cycle begins again. Bam has an additional manifestation in the Voice of Bam (V), an omnipresent force that directs the proceedings from a "small megaphone at head level." The voice acts something like a "voice of God", and determines things to be positive or negative at a whim.

[edit] Interpretation

Somewhat elusive in theme although with a definite totalitarian edge, Beckett himself struggled over its meaning: "I don't know what it means. Don't ask me what it means. It's an object."

The Plays of Samuel Beckett
Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II, Breath, Catastrophe, Come and Go, Eleutheria (posthumous), Endgame, Film (screenplay), Footfalls, Happy Days, Krapp's Last Tape, Not I, Ohio Impromptu, A Piece of Monologue, Play, Rockaby, Rough for Theatre I, Rough for Theatre II, That Time, Waiting for Godot, What Where