Humanity. Tragedy with comedy. Maguy Marin on May B.

Maguy Marin’s May B. was first performed on November 4, 1981 in Angers. Less than five years later, it had already racked up over 200 performances. Although the choreographer has since created many other pieces, if she has a signature work, May B. is surely it. In May, it comes to London’s Sadler’s Wells. Marin recently told David Mead about the piece.

Maguy Marin was first drawn to the work of playwright Samuel Beckett while still a student at Mudra, Maurice Béjart’s school in Brussels, in the early 1970s. Around two decades later, in an interview with French journalist Thomas Cousineau, she recalled that, while immediately impressed by the author’s work, she didn’t quite understand why. She talked of how he had somehow planted a seed in her, which then hid itself, slowly gestating over several years.

As she started to reflect on Beckett’s writing more consciously, in 1981 that seed burst forth and became a bloom in the shape of May B., the title being a nod to Beckett’s affinity for the word ‘perhaps’ and his liking for puns.

While there are specific influences, and you’ll certainly get more from May B. if you know your Beckett, it’s not essential. It’s also not based on any one work by the author, although Marin has confessed that Endgame, which she saw immediately prior to writing the synopsis, played a big part. Her creation also contains discernible elements from Come and Go and All That Fall.

But although she has previously suggested that parts of May B. were specifically inspired by the actor who played Cloy in that production of Endgame; his physical gestures, his way of walking, climbing his ladder and so on, the figures in the work are more composites of those found across Beckett’s writing. In ill-fitting night clothes and plastered grey, they trudge their way through the piece with, initially at least, a deep sense of alienation. Expect incredibly precise movement, unison being just that, as they reveal an increasing range of emotions. It is dance, but dance that eschews the traditional aestheticism of the dancer’s body and places it firmly in the real world.

Just as she does not depict specific characters, Marin similarly does not illustrate Beckett’s words, rather distilling his work in her own way.

She agrees that Beckett’s writing somehow lends itself to dance and non-verbal theatre; and that it’s something to do with the way he paints scenes and the characters within them, and the attention to detail.

Looking back, she says, “I was particularly attracted by the way bodies and movement are described, also the rhythm of the words.” She believes there is also something special about the experience of waiting or expectation that one finds in Beckett. “I’m still very fascinated by his works.”

When asked what was her original intention with May B., what she was seeking to say, to show, Marin’s answer is simple. “Humanity, poor humanity! Always trying to continue to live, in any conditions. Also the humour that inspires the littleness and the hugeness of this human condition. Tragedy with comedy.”

Marin was keen for Beckett to approve of the work, the two meeting before rehearsals began. Beckett had a reputation for being difficult with people who wanted to stage his works but he allowed her a lot of interpretive freedom.

He was very supportive of the project, she says. “I wanted to use parts of the texts that he wrote and of course I was very respectful of the way I worked on his words. But he told me not to have to much respect. He encouraged me to be free for the words as much I was free for the dance.”

At the time of their meeting, Marin has already chosen some of the music, including Franz Schubert’s lied, Death and the Maiden, so it came as a nice surprise that the pair shared an affinity for the composer’s work, Beckett suggesting two further leider, Schwanengesang (Swan Song) and Winterreise. Beckett would never see the finished work, however.

The choice of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet came later although Marin says it was an obvious selection. The composition features a homeless vagrant apparently singing alone in the street. He’s destitute but believes in something and is encouraged by some hope. It’s a sort of optimism within pessimism, a Beckett idea that runs through the work.

Structurally, May B. is in three sections, different but clearly linked. Marin explains, “The first is a chorus dance to Schubert’s Le Carnaval de Binche, which I chose for its energy. The second part is more theatrical with the birthday scene.” Dance and theatre then come together in the third part, the journey.”

Initially, Marin says that audiences were shocked by May B. but, “After many years, little by little, I guess that people accept and identify with it more and more. Part of its resonance is probably its sense of timelessness and that we see ourselves in the characters and their relationships. In a way, we see our world, she agrees.

Watching May B., it’s also near impossible to interpret it in relation to contemporary events. The feeling of hopelessness, of travelling, of confinement, of looking for a way out. The idea of the need we have for each other yet at the same time despise mutual dependency. This is a universal theme: it is not limited to the experience of immigration or deportation.

For all that, when asked what she would like audiences to take away from May B., Marin has a one-word answer. “Humour.”

A dance of life. A dance imbued deeply with the spirit of Beckett and his work. An homage but so much more. And certainly an arresting piece of theatre. That’s May B.

Compagnie Maguy Marin perform May B. at Sadler’s Wells on May 21 & 22, 2024. Visit www.sadlerswells.com for further details and tickets.