Friday, March 20, 2009

Four people, three walls, two cans

I went to Boston recently and had the chance to go to the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, one of the best theaters (so people say) in the U.S. My friend and I saw a staging of Beckett's Endgame, a one-act play about... well, about postwar despair, or personal devastation, or something equally Beckettian and cheerful. The main character is blind and in a wheelchair; he keeps his crippled parents in garbage cans; his smelly, sulky, limping servant is the only one who gets to move around to look out the windows and see... not much. The sea out of one, the earth out of another, clouds... you get the idea. There's no describing an absurdist play, but the actors had exquisite timing, and the set was brilliantly simple.

1 comment:

1009 said...

I love Endgame. I also worked for a short time at AmRep as an usher. Sadly they never did any Beckett while I was there.

You oughta read Adorno's "Trying to Understand Endgame." It might be his best work.