‘Where is she, it may be asked. [Pause.] Why, in the old home…’
– V

In the old home, May, as a child, had asked her mother for the carpet to be removed because ‘I must hear the feet, however faint they fall’. During his own childhood, Beckett recalled, his mother had ‘removed the carpets from her bedroom floor because… she must hear the feet, however faint they fall.’

Now, however, there is little that is homely or, indeed, naturalistic about the ever-diminishing empty place inhabited by the character – a narrow, barely visible strip of floor just nine steps in length and of one metre width.

With the stage enveloped in darkness, whatever dim (and ever-diminishing) light there is – ‘strongest at floor level, less on body, least on head’ – directs audience attention to the ‘rhythmic tread’ of the footfalls and (with even the feet being hidden) away from the character. ‘May stands independent of her surroundings as a concentrated bundle on the strip of light,’ notes Walter Asmus, Director of Footfalls for the ‘Beckett on Film’ project. Hers is a twilight existence.