|
|
Director Andre Gregory shows that process is as important as the product in the upcoming Rep sponsored open rehearsal of “Endgame.”
|
|
|
Gerry Bamman (top) returns as the blind tyrant in “End Game.” Larry Pine will reprise his role almost 35 years after his first performance.
|
|
The game’s not over
Director Andre Gregory brings Beckett’s ‘Endgame’ back, and its actors too
Ann Wood
Banner Staff
The year was 1970. Much of the country was protesting the Vietnam War, Charles Manson was convicted of murdering Sharon Tate and the World Trade Center was completed. That was also the last time acclaimed New York City actors Larry Pine and Gerry Bamman performed Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” under the direction of Andre Gregory.
That is, until now.
An open rehearsal of “Endgame,” complete with Bamman as Hamm and Pine as his servant Clov as directed by Gregory and produced by the Provincetown Repertory Theatre, will show at 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday at The Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St., Provincetown. Tickets are $28, $26 for seniors and students and can be purchased by calling PtownTix at (508) 487-9793 or online at www.ptowntix.com.
It’s fitting that Gregory began rehearsing “Endgame” in response to the 9/11 terror attacks that struck down the World Trade Center, but although Vietnam and the Iraqi wars share similar qualities, both actors and the director see Beckett’s dramatic play in a different light from when it was last staged.
“Back then it was because of the Vietnam War. Now it’s another imminent threat,” Pine says by phone from New York City. “That was part of it. And, if it was just that, we could have just gone off and no one would have known what the other ones were doing. [But] it’s a good play and a good play is a true play.”
Bamman says performing “Endgame” was never as politically important to him as it was to Gregory.
“I wasn’t as compelled as Andre was. And I certainly think he’s right,” he says, adding that he’s more fearful now than he was back then. “I feel that we’re closer to a nuclear incident, whether it’s warfare or a terrorist attack, than we’ve ever been in in our life.”
Because the U.S. is the only country that’s launched a nuclear weapon and Israel “loaded them up in the Yom Kipper war,” Bamman fears either county could make a move anytime.
“I think this play will bring it home,” he says. “In a way it’s beyond this administration. It’s this world that we’ve created.”
All three agree that the 1970 production, which opened in New York to rave reviews and then was traveled all around the U.S. and in much of the world, was funnier than it is now.
“Back then it was brash, crazy,” Pine says. “It was in its time. It was completely insane. Now it’s not as insane but it’s still insane because it’s an insane play.”
The insanity of the play centers around its characters – Hamm who orders Clov to serve him and Clov who can’t stop serving Hamm because there’s nothing else. Then there are Hamm’s parents, Nell and Nagg, who live in trash cans, awaiting death. The repetitiveness of the dialog emphasizes the hopelessness of the characters’ plight.
“One thing you can say about all the characters in this play is that they all have one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel,” Gregory says.
While the play itself was always serious (it was first staged in 1957 at the Royal Court Theater in London, and was written in response to Auschwitz) because of the wildness of the late ’60s-early ’70s, the actors gave a crazier, more energetic performance.
“I think when I first did it it was more strongly influenced by comedians like Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. This production, I would say, is more a drug for America even though it’s laced with a lot of humor,” Gregory says.
It may be funny, but playing the blind, immobile tyrant Hamm isn’t fun for Bamman.
“I’m never glad to do this play. It’s extremely bleak. It’s very funny, too. It’s painful. I never look forward to doing it. On the other hand I think it’s a monumental piece and it’s so far ahead of its time that I’m grateful to do it. But it ain’t enjoyable,” he says.
Bamman’s used to playing all sorts of roles. He received Obie and Drama League awards and a Drama Desk nomination for his performance as Richard Nixon in “Nixon’s Nixon.” (Gregory praises it as “a terrifying performance.”) He and Gregory were founding members of “The Manhattan Project,” and Bamman starred with Pine in the Obie award-winning performance of “Alice in Wonderland,” which Gregory directed. The trio also worked together on the stage and film production of “Vanya on 42nd Street.”
Bamman’s most recent work includes the title role of the world premiere of “Ward Just’s Lowell Limpet,” Robert Moses in “Shakespeare, Moses and Joe Papp,” which won the Helen Hayes award for best new play and many films including “Runaway Jury,” “Lorenzo’s Oil” and “Secret of My Success.”
Besides his work with Bamman and Gregory, Pine’s Broadway credits include “The Seagull,” “End of the World,” Angels in America” and “Bus Stop.” He’s performed in many Off-Broadway productions and in the films “Woody Allen Project 2004,” “Empire Falls,” “Door in the Floor,” “Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Shipping News,” among others. Both he and Bamman have performed in a slew of television productions.
Gregory made his mark as an avant-guard theater director in the 1960s and has since written a play, appeared in many films (including starring alongside Wallace Shawn in the 1981 Louis Malle film “My Dinner with Andre”) and is now rehearsing Ibsen’s “The Master Builder,” translated by Shawn, which the pair hopes to soon film.
This production of “Endgame” has been in rehearsal for three years and with it, Gregory brought Bamman and Pine to the Outer Cape last summer to rehearse in the basement of his home. Gregory lives in Truro almost half time with his wife, filmmaker Cindy Kleine. Bamman recalls rehearsing in a Truro basement as “odd.”
“The basement part was very good and Andre loved that and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some carryover on that eventually,” he says, adding that the stark contrast of the basement and the Truro sunshine was almost surreal.
As for the 2004 production of “Endgame,” Gregory says, “I think the emphasis in this production is on fear, imagined or real, and it’s hard to tell if the fear is justified or not justified. I would say [this production is a combination of] de Kooning, John Cage and the Marx Brothers. I think of the play as a dizzying descent into a laughing hell. Something I really want to emphasize too, in bold print, is that this is a work in progress. It is unfinished. Part of the fun for the audience, I think, is that they will be taking part in, slightly, a rehearsal but really an evening in which we will be putting the finishing touches on a work that is not yet completed.”
“We never do it the same way twice. It’s amazing. It never comes out the same way,” says Pine. “We just live through it. Sometimes it’s really dark.
Sometimes it’s really funny and probably sometimes it’s really boring. But it’s rarely less than those things.”
Pine says that only a few people – friends – have seen this new production. But from those people he says he’s heard that this version of “Endgame” is very relevant today. And Bamman similarly appreciates it. No matter where it’s rehearsed or how difficult it is, he sees “Endgame” as “one of the greatest plays in modern literature and I think the language is just Shakespearean in beauty and I feel humbled with the responsibility of being able to handle it.”
Gregory agrees that this is Beckett’s finest work.
“I do think it’s probably the greatest play, and the most despairing play, in the English language since King Lear. … This play isn’t a play like other plays with a beginning, a middle and an end. The play is more in the middle of what it’s like to be here on any given day. So the play is like pure process,” he says. “The line that sums it up the most for me that’s in the play is ‘Nothing’s funnier than unhappiness.’”
|
In the Arts
|
|
|
|
|
Oct 21st, 2004