bordered by strips of fluorescent lighting. When the Voice of Bam declares, "I switch on," the luminescent tubes stutter awake to the sound of breakers being thrown. The voice itself is dispassionate and calm; issuing from a megaphone-shaped loudspeaker fixed above the central doors, it evokes HAL 9000 from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The metal clanging of doors and the crisp footsteps on the metallic floor accentuate the chilly atmosphere. O'Donnell said in interview: "[T]here is no set in the original play, but I argued that the whole play is about power and the abuse of power, and how information is power, so we used the library as a metaphor for somebody who has control of all the power and all the information. When it came to casting, I was looking for a particular type of actor – somebody who could bring a sort of menacing quality to the screen. There is a lot of menace in the play. What Where is about a brooding, palpable evil, which is a theme that occurs in Beckett's other work." Presented thus is it easy to see What Where as Beckett's Nineteen Eighty-Four. At the end of Catastrophe there is a flicker of hope. Not so here. Just as Winston Smith is beaten into submission so are these characters. O’Donnell brings "the scene closer to realism and create[s] a dark, sinister atmosphere by homing in on the faces of the two actors … As he said, 'Filming allows you to show a close-up of a terrified man, bringing a different edge to the work.'" Before switching off for the last time Bam's voice instructs the audience: "Make sense who may" but how do you make sense out of something senseless? And is any adjective used more often to describe violence? Beckett has left it up to the viewer to supply his own meaning. Adaptations The play has been adapted as a one-act chamber opera by Heinz Holliger, composed in 1988 and first released on a commercial recording in 1997. References External links Voyelles (Vowels) by Arthur Rimbaud Oft in the Stilly Night by Thomas Moore Gute Nacht (Good Night) by Wilhelm Müller Magic Theatre website 1983 plays Theatre of the Absurd Plays by Samuel Beckett