Waiting for Beckett: Stephen Dillane and Conor Lovett stage the great playwright’s novel

‘There is no point at which you say, “Ah, that’s it”’ … Stephen Dillane and Conor Lovett in How It Is (Part One) at the Coronet theatre. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Two men are meeting on Zoom, as they have done twice a week for the past two years. One of them is in northern France, his cottage bathed in bright spring sunshine, two portraits of a craggy Samuel Beckett behind him. The other is in a chilly Sussex, his window casting a dull grey light.

The first starts to recite. “Before Pim long before with Pim vast tracts of time,” he says. “A few traces that’s all seeing who I always.”