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American actor Alan Mandell and Irish actor Barry McGovern play lead roles in Samuel Beckett's end-of-life drama, “Endgame. Mandell, 88, is also the play's director, and he told The Frame that memorizing "Endgame" is one of the hardest things he's ever done. It's a maze of language — rhythmic and deceptively cued.
The Irish avant-garde playwright Beckett is best known for writing the existentialist “Waiting for Godot” — and it was that play where the actors first worked together, in a 2012 staging at the Mark Taper Forum. But their relationship with Beckett’s work — and in Mandell's case, with Beckett himself — goes back much further.
Mandell was the co-founder of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, which launchedwith a performance of “Waiting for Godot" inside the prison. When Mandell and McGovern visited The Frame, host John Horn started by asking how Mandell’s relationship with one of the San Quentin inmates led to meeting and working with Beckett.
ALAN MANDELL: It was in 1980 when I received a call from Rick Cluchey, a former inmate at San Quentin. We created the San Quentin Drama Workshop together. Rick called me one day and said that he'd been paroled. He was in Europe and was working with Beckett. I had sort of introduced him to the work of Beckett when we took "Waiting for Godot" to San Quentin. When he got out, he introduced me to Beckett [himself].
The first play I did [with Beckett] was "Endgame." I played Nagg. I was terrified. [Beckett] said, "We'll pull up two chairs. I'll do Nell and you do Nagg. So that was my first experience — like the second day that I'd met Beckett and we did the Nagg-Nell scene together.
And he clearly liked what he saw?
MANDELL: He liked what he heard. He patted me and said, "Oh, you're going to be very good." And I thought, My god, you can send me home now. It doesn't get any better than this.
Samuel Beckett insisted — and would get his lawyers on you if you varied — that his plays be mounted and performed exactly as written. There are exactly 379 pauses written into the script. Where do you find opportunity to interpret and expand upon the printed word?
BARRY McGOVERN: Oh, you find lots. I think there's great freedom in it. Every actor, every writer, every set designer is going to be different. There's an awful lot of nonsense talked about Beckett and Beckett's estate and every single word — Beckett changed things all the time. A lot of the pauses he cut out. The fact that there's 379 pauses — well done, counting! You must have a sad life! [Laughs]
The computer counts them for you!
McGOVERN: Alright, Okay! We're doing the version that [Beckett] did with Alan in 1980. That version that they did with the San Quentin Drama Workshop had a lot of cuts that Beckett made and some additions as well. So, you know, it was always a work in progress with Beckett. It's a bit of a nuisance sometimes because I've done this play a number of times, so I've had to get used to a new way of saying things or a new way of doing things or cutting something I've done before.
I want to go back to this idea that some actors and directors have about mounting Beckett. What is the role of a director when so much is prescribed?
MANDELL: The piece, his work, has a lot to do with music. And of course, he himself was a musician. He played piano and he was a mathematician. He said to me that "Endgame" was a chamber piece in eight movements, and so as far as pauses go — a pause is a musical beat, and silence is a musical rest. So if you understand anything about music then you'll know exactly what this piece is. So, you do the movements, the eight movements, that way.
The dialogue in this play is non linear.
MANDELL: The memorization of "Endgame" is, let me tell you, one of the hardest things I have ever done. I think, if you're under 80, you have a better chance of getting through it. At my age, 88, I want you to know it's really difficult. There are lines that have no connection to what has gone before. Learning it, there are times when I'm on stage and I'm thinking, Didn't I just say that? Did I do that sequence before?
Is the same true for you, Barry?
McGOVERN: No. It's much harder for [Mandell's character] Hamm. Eleven or 12 times during the play I say, "I leave you." Sometimes it's, "I leave you, I have things to do." That's three times. And there's about 10 or 11 times I say, "I leave you." So poor Alan has to know what comes next! It's the same cue, but it's like, Which line do I say now?
It's a mental exertion!
McGOVERN: Oh yes! So I think from my point of view — and every actor is different — when I was first learning this, I had to learn it to a certain extent the way you'd normally learn lines, but to another extent, look at it as poetry or music and see technically, How does this come?
"Endgame" is at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City through May 22.