"Endgame" by Samuel Beckett - Alan Mandell as Nagg

[joshtruction]

Is the audio supposed to drop out at 1:13? It adds to the power of what Nagg is saying by forcing the audience to pay attention to his face. If it was just an accident, it was a happy one.

[KingofParody]

@joshtruction He says "your mother? No. Me." It seems unintentional, but seems like a great place to have the silence, that's for sure.

[villiparis]

this is how the voices in a beckett play ought to sound, love to see the full version of this play, heavy stuff!

[TheatreFracture]

I totlay agree, this is fantasticly done. I cant wait to see Complicite perform this come October

[nothingUneed2no]

i love this monologue. this rendition..okay. .. kinda whiny, pitiful, like a child. not out of a grand experience, or the grand experience Becketts writing takes us into.

[amdell1]

I did this scene with Beckett doing Nell. This is how he wanted me to perform it. It was a thrill performing with Beckett/

[bmkekk17]

Wow, You worked with Beckett! That is so neat! What was he like in person!?

[amdell1]

There is a book by his biographer called "Beckett Remembered. Remembering Beckett" I have a piece in this book and it will give you an insight into what this genius was like.

[dantheman29078]

I'm also playing Nagg in a college production of Endgame. It's rather abstract and weird and I don't understand it too well, but It's not too bad.

[gothicNightwishFan]

i'm playing Nagg in our school production of this.....it's an incredibly abstract thing to have to do

[RiRiShi]

I'm studying this play right now for Drama. I really love it!!! But this play is extremely abstract.

[abby495]

Anytime I read Beckett I get so depressed. But in the end I always come back.

[Syliviel]

I was Nagg in a college production of this play. If you think it's trippy to watch or read, try being immersed in it for weeks. It is not a kind play.

[dinnerbucket9]

Brilliant choice. A long moment I have over looked and the most sorrowful in the play and beautifully acted and presented. That said, I still believe Beckett was serious [ and he is not always so] when he said his work is mainly constituted by 'fundamental sounds'. The complexity is, I suppose, structural and informed by his love of chess. But the heart of the matter is not distant from HAMLET or vaudeville.

[stephendedlus]

just what i thought

[EyesoreII]

This is the most abstract play I've ever read, probably even moreso than Old Times, Victims of Duty, The Chairs, etc... I really need to re-read it, I didn't digest it right the first time through. Thanks for posting it.

[rezeski]

This is Endgame: "The transition from bare minimum to nothing." Read Theodor Adorno, "Trying to understand Endgame" in The Adorno Reader. After you read this, you will have a much better idea of what Endgame is (and is not). [Reading the play twice, as you say, isn't going to fully enlighten you... it is, as you rightly state, a difficult play, and Beckett himself would not explain it. ]

[therearenoothers]

amazingly good.