Live Performance Review: First Love produced by Gate Theatre Dublin (Edinburgh International Festival (E.I.F.) 2013), Saturday 31.08.2012 19:00 Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

This, as with Eh Joe on Tuesday past, is a performance of a Samuel Beckett work. Also as with Tuesday's, this was a single-hander, this time for the actor Peter Egan. To my mind this was a portrayal of a bitter and isolated old man whose intelligence fuels his cynicism. 

The writing was complex and stuffed with ideas and paradoxes. The end conclusion/denouncement is that people make a choice to either expose themselves to love and loving or they don't. It appears as though the character has realised that he has shunned opportunities for this richness in his life. I had greatly enjoyed this performance, as I had the one on Tuesday and to think I had been very wary of Beckett expecting it to be very dour and humorless. Both performances were in ways simple, though also profound.

Rating: 10/10.