"...It will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
His voice rising and falling in pitch, rhythm and volume, Barry McGovern bestowed exuberant intensity upon the last words of Samuel Beckett's "The Unnamable," the final mesmerizing selection he chose for performance at the Norman James Theater last week.
"[It] blew me away," said sophomore Isaac Schendel following McGovern's reading and recitation of various selections of Beckett's work.
McGovern, an Irish actor who has performed in many of Beckett's plays including "Waiting for Godot," "Endgame," and "Krapp's Last Tape," gave his reading in honor of the centenary of the birth of the prolific poet, essayist, novelist and playwright.
"Based on his readings," said junior Olivia Mirot, "he seemed like a really powerful actor. I really liked it."
McGovern decided upon snippets from More Pricks Than Kicks, Murphy, Molloy, Waiting for Godot (he pronounced it, in his Irish brogue, God-O), where he read the monologues of both Pozzo and Vladimir, and Endgame, in which he read Clov's opening and closing speech. "I didn't want to choose obscure pieces," McGovern said (of a body of work which, as he himself was hasty to point out, and in the words of Beckett himself in reference to his mentor Joyce's Work in Progress, is "not about something, but is that something itself").
McGovern first became interested in Beckett's work at the age of 12, when he saw Waiting for Godot on television. He found the play "intriguing," became himself interested. Later, in college, he played in Endgame. His penchant for the plays of Beckett has not swayed since.
He was finally able to meet Beckett in 1986, after corresponding with him to ask for permission to perform a one-man show based on what is usually referred to as the "trilogy": Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. Beckett granted him permission. From that point on, "every time I was in Paris, I rang him," McGovern recounted.
The actor knew Beckett for three years until his passing in December of 1989. McGovern described Beckett as "lovely," "charming," and "extraordinary," mentioning how private he was and complimenting his "razor sharp brain." He "lived like a hermit," and was not interested in things "of the flesh," though when mentioning this, McGovern smiled ruefully, adding: "I probably shouldn't say that, because he did have his moments when he was younger." His clothes were simple, according to McGovern, and he gave many "things away to friends."
Though McGovern feels that Molloy is arguably Beckett's greatest work, he has "a special affection for "Endgame." "The Unnamable" is most extraordinary, but so dense and tricky that, for balance and shape," he prefers Molloy. He has just released a CD set containing his reading of Beckett's "trilogy." The project was funded by the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe and can be purchased online at www.rte.ie/shop.
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