Samuel Beckett Takes New York

For Samuel Beckett, death is far from the end. In the final months of 2025, Beckett has burst onto the New York stage, achieving a higher profile than nearly any playwright active since the postmodernist’s death in 1989. With productions of *Waiting for Godot* at the Hudson Theatre, *Krapp’s Last Tape* at the NYU Skirball Center, and *Endgame* at the Irish Arts Center, audiences have come to appreciate the longevity of his idiosyncratic genius.

Though the playwright revels in posing questions that will not help anyone sleep soundly, his characters dismiss the universe and everything in it much like one might toss out a moth-eaten hat. There are many reasons to see Beckett productions, and ideally, the ideas and writing would remain paramount in people’s minds. But the world is what it is, and the luring of A-list talent to take on leads in two of these plays has certainly helped.

Keanu Reeves appears as Estragon in *Waiting for Godot*, while legendary Irish actor Stephen Rea takes center stage as the solo lead in *Krapp’s Last Tape*. The Irish Arts Center’s production of *Endgame* brings fresh talent to a play that has intrigued and baffled audiences since its first run at London’s Royal Court Theatre on April 3, 1957.

That initial production was performed in French and featured Roger Blin as Hamm, Jean Martin as Clov, Georges Adet as Nagg, and Christine Tsingos as Nell. In the new version, those four roles are portrayed by Rory Nolan, Aaron Monaghan, Bosco Hogan, and Marie Mullen, respectively.

Running from October 22 to November 23, this production offers a fitting coda to this latest Beckett season and, for the curious, serves as a portal to the heart of his oeuvre.

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If death is not the end of a creative mind’s presence in our culture, the imminence of our physical demise naturally brings ruminations and reflections. *Endgame* is a series of conversations—some playful, others heated—among four leads who are pitiable in their dependence, yet in the midst of their flailings, rise to comic eloquence.

At least their hearts are in the right place. Clov continuously offers to attend to Hamm’s needs for pills, medicine, or food, yet Hamm’s aggressive questioning late in the play suggests Clov may actually be the more needy one.

Nagg asks Nell for a scratch and offers to reciprocate. Nell tells Nagg she has been crying—or at least trying to do so—then the two banter about where a scratch would help most, leading to a riff on “vein” and “vain.” The random gab segues into metaphysical irony as Nagg tries to cheer up Nell with the story of a tailor who takes heat from a customer for needing three months to make a pair of trousers, when God created the world in just seven days.

The tailor asks the customer to compare the state of the world to the state of the trousers and to draw their own conclusion.

This playful dalliance with philosophical and metaphysical questions continues as Hamm and Clov exchange thoughts on the meaning of their lives—or the lack thereof. Clov laughs at Hamm after the latter entertains the possibility that they have not wasted their time on Earth in pursuit of illusions. This prompts Hamm to ask what might happen if a “rational being” came back to the world to make sense of their actions.

The discussion shifts back to the mundane as Clov cries aloud about a flea on his body. Hamm interjects, “But humanity might start from there all over again! Catch him!”

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Audiences who take in *Endgame*, with its mélange of humor and despair, may develop a deeper interest in Beckett’s explorations of how men and women should fill their finite days on this mortal coil.

Besides advancing Beckett’s reputation as a playwright, these new productions may encourage more people to seek out his fiction—much of which still languishes in obscurity.

As Beckett’s experiences in the early 20th century impressed upon him, it is far easier to fall into paths of oppression, dogma, violence, and retribution—and become locked into vicious cycles—than to find answers that offer some form of satisfaction when reaching the stage of life depicted in *Endgame*.

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In stories such as “Fingal,” published in 1934 as part of the collection *More Pricks Than Kicks*, Beckett presents a vision of Ireland as a land of natural beauty contrasted starkly with a spiritual void generations have tried and failed to fill.

Belacqua, the protagonist of “Fingal” and the surrounding tales, goes with his girlfriend Winnie on an outing in the titular county, admiring the coast, estuaries, dunes, hills, mountains, and woods. But what captures their true interest is the Portrane Lunatic Asylum, whose boundaries are somewhat blurred to outsiders.

This detail is no accident. Beckett draws the reader into his portrayal of a society where judgments about who belongs where—who is sane and who falls under the whims of those claiming sole legitimacy—are subjective, arbitrary, yet binding.

“Now the loonies poured out into the sun, the better behaved left to their own devices, the others in herds in charge of warders,” he writes.

Beckett goes on to describe a playground where “milder patients” roam freely, some bask in the sun, while others form marauding gangs.

Anyone who, like the McCourt brothers, has survived the rigors of a sectarian education, or who has endured the trauma of the Troubles and the brutality of prisons like Long Kesh, will find in “Fingal” a mosaic of unappealing choices.

It evokes a society where the pliant live in humble subjection, watching football games and getting drunk under the threat of coercive and punitive measures from self-appointed enforcers of different orders.

Late in the story, Belacqua renounces the charms of the countryside and backs out of a promise to meet Winnie and a prison director. Although they ask others to help track him down, their efforts are in vain—Belacqua has settled into a pub, drinking in a way that alienates even the establishment’s owner, who has surely seen more than his share of binge drinkers.

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In Beckett’s vision presented in “Fingal,” there are no pat answers to the metaphysical questions that resonate with even greater power and urgency in his plays.

As audiences watch his characters strut and fret on the New York stage, we should hope they enjoy the experience enough to pursue a more holistic engagement with Beckett’s vision of Ireland and the universe.
https://www.irishecho.com/2025/10/samuel-beckett-takes-new-york

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