050519: went to see production of this play last night. independent theatre, performance, company, simple, single set, industrial stage, one scene informed by lighting tech, not much sound, special effects, so very good acting obvious. as read so many times it is possible to go by memory for all dialogue not heard. which is most of it (my hearing deficit not performance). seeing play performed is no doubt the art. all the reading, all criticism, all anecdotal reviews, like this, are only gestures toward the art. i could appreciate the staging, interpretations of characters, immediate presence, time passing, community of audience... if i have read the play recently it is possible to recall lines, then again some quotes are indelible. i do not find it bleak, dark, difficult, do find it tragic/comic and sometimes just comic (slapstick works more onstage than in writing). i love this play... but then all of us are born mad, some of us remain so... and if you do not love the play, well, as didi and gogo would say with resigned shrug: (there is) nothing to be done...
020219 from ???: this is from many years before my birth, this is history, this is maybe out of fashion, but i love this play. and i am not alone (i think) though this past month or so i have asked many people, mostly here at the coffeehouse, mostly younger, if they have read or seen or even heard of it: the answer has been No...
how is this possible? is this definitive tragicomedy less than essential art for our postmodern world? should not everyone at least have heard of it? of its bleak, hilarious, pointed, depiction of eternal deferral? i have read this several times but never seen it produced. does it not translate? has the world moved on? is it no more than artifact of its time? i tell a young woman who is studying theatre set design that my favourite set is for this play... this is a joke that fails, for she has never read the set description (a country road. a tree) and of course telling why the joke ruins it... but this remains a favourite fiction...
someone said this is a play in which nothing happens. twice. i love it. others might not be so very sad this play is not universally known. i want to see productions and productions... and people to see it everywhere from springfield to seinfeld to donnesbury. this is my kind of laughter falling from birth to grave. the man need not have written anything else to secure his place in literary history...
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