Eh Joe

Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author’s fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May. “It [was] followed by six undated typescripts (numbered 0 - 4 and ‘final version’).”

Despite the English version being recorded first, due to delays at the BBC, the first actual broadcast was of Elmer and Erika Tophoven’s German translation, He Joe, on 13 April 1966, Beckett’s sixtieth birthday, by Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart; Beckett directed, his first credit as such. Deryk Mendel played Joe and Nancy Illig voiced the woman.

The first English broadcast went out eventually on BBC2 (4 July 1966) with Jack MacGowran, for whom the play was specifically written, playing Joe (originally ‘Jack’ at the start of the first draft) and Siân Phillips as Voice. Beckett had asked for Billie Whitelaw but she was unavailable due to another acting commitment. Alan Gibson directed but with Beckett in attendance.

At least thirteen versions have been preserved on tape making it far and away Beckett’s most produced teleplay.

It was first published in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber, 1967) – although the version published is closer to Typescript 3, mentioned above, than the version as broadcast.

The play opens with Joe, a grey-haired man in his late fifties, sitting alone in an archetypal Beckettian room. He is wearing an old dressing gown and a pair of carpet slippers.

Like a young child, checking for monsters, Joe methodically goes through his room. As he does so the camera follows him…

The camera cuts to a close-up of Joe. His eyes are closed, his features relaxed. Beckett indicates that the close-up should begin with the camera one yard (1 m) from his face and dolly-in gradually throughout the piece. He indicates nine breaks where the camera is allowed to move, four inches (102 mm) closer each time. By the end of the play, the camera is literally staring him in the eyes. “The numeral nine has often been associated with death,” e.g. there are nine circles in Dante’s vision of Hell.

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