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.
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue) sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue) sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.