Samuel Beckett's play "Endgame," up at the Irish Repertory Theatre, under the direction of Ciarán O'Reilly, begins with a wordless spectacle. A man moves around the stage, drawing curtains back to reveal not the windows that the audience expects but one brick wall after another. There are two excruciatingly small openings in the brick, like portholes on a ship, which take a while and a ladder-to pry open. It's the kind of sight gag that can express the whole symbolic structure of a show: "Endgame" is a series of thwarting thwarted connections, thwarted meanings, clipped-off attempts to tell a story. Every time you think a vista of clarity might be on the horizon, you slam into a new wall that obfuscates the view.
The curtain drawer's name is Clov (Bill Irwin), and, like many of the characters strewn dismally through Beckett's œuvre, he has a physical disability. His legs are bowed and unsteady, and he's in obvious, constant pain. In order to open the small windows, he has to drag a ladder onstage. He's expert at managing obstacles: he throws his legs over the top of the ladder with a workman's precision. Irwin executes Clov's motions with an almost surreal rhythm, full of pauses and habitual tics, squeezing something like style out of a daily challenge. Clov has obviously been here-wherever this dim, cluttered, gloomy, perhaps postapocalyptic room is for a long time. His repetitions have made him highly skilled, in his way, at his low tasks.
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Denne historien er fra February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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The Football Bro - Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
If, on a cool weekend morning in autumn, you happen to be watching “College GameDay,” on ESPN, don’t worry about figuring out which of the broadcasters behind the improbably long desk is Pat McAfee. He’s the one with the roast-pork tan, his hair cut high and tight, likely tieless among his more businesslike colleagues. The rest of the onair crew—Lee Corso, Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, and, newly, the former University of Alabama coach Nick Saban—tend to look and dress and talk like participants in an old-school Republican-primary debate. McAfee, though, favors windowpane checks on his jackets and a slip of chest poking out from behind his two or three open buttons. If the others are politicians, he’s the cool-coded megachurch pastor who sometimes acts as their spiritual adviser.
The Dark Time. - On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging. The point of contact between NATO and Russia's nuclear stronghold is the small town of Kirkenes. For years, Russia has treated the area as a laboratory, testing intelligence and influence operations before replicating them across Europe.
MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.