Pontine Theatre presents a rare opportunity to hear the entirety of T.S. Eliot’s poetic masterpiece, Four Quartets, spoken live by actor and poet John Farrell, artistic director and co-founder of Figures of Speech Theatre. In 2011, with special permission from the Eliot Estate, Farrell premiered a one-man recitation of Four Quartets, Eliot’s complex, deeply moving meditation on the human spirit, time and memory. Farrell has since toured the performance to theaters and other venues in the US and Canada.
Farrell’s delivery of Four Quartets is as natural, deep, and illuminating as Kenneth Branagh doing Shakespeare. His presentation here was utterly magical. It’s really extraordinary how, instead of parading the poem, Farrell inhabits it from the inside out, creating a rich, subtle, meditative experience, in which Eliot’s words hover & resonate, provoke & delight. I receive a good many clips of poets and actors reciting ‘the greats,’ and yet had never before been tempted in the least to host any of them at Smith—but, mere minutes into a video of Farrell’s recitation of Four Quartets, I was hooked.
--Ellen Doré Watson, Director, The Poetry Center at Smith College
Three performances: Friday, Nov. 3 @7pm Saturday, Nov. 4 @4pm Sunday, Nov. 5 @2pm
Newington Old Town Hall, 336 Nimble Hill Road, Newington NH
Presented in collaboration with Newington Historical Society