Brian Dennehy

Brian Dennehy as “Erie” Smith in Hughie,
and as Krapp in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s
Last Tape in the Goodman’s Albert Theatre
2009 dual production. Photo from Playbill.

But it doesn’t start that way. Beckett goes even darker, because Beckett says, “It’s a joke. Not only is it a joke—it’s a slapstick joke, it’s a banana peel joke.” Ok, this guy eats a banana, takes the peel, drops it on the floor, forgets about the banana peel. The audience is watching him, knowing, sooner or later, he’s going to slip on the banana peel and fall on his ass, which he does. The audience laughs. The audience not only laughs at him falling, they laugh at all the stuff before that, because they know he’s going to fall. Then Beckett gives you the play, which is: That is life, and it’s the only possibility in life. There are no other possibilities. All of life is banana, banana peel, slip, fall on your ass. I don’t give a shit how much money you’ve got, I don’t care how successful you are, I don’t care if you’re Mother Theresa. It’s banana peel! And you’re going to fall on your ass, and the only reaction that makes any sense is to laugh. Now, is Beckett a tragedian? I would say yes; but according to Joseph Wood Krutch, of course, who probably never saw any Beckett, he would not be, because the tragic hero has to be given options, one of which leads to—you can’t say comedy—but leads to some kind of positive end, and one of which leads to tragedy. But with both of these playwrights, there are no options, there never can be.

Audience: Can I just comment on what you said very briefly? On the end of Hughie, Hughie and Erie get together [Dennehy: that’s right—not Hughie and Erie, Erie and the new clerk]—they get together, and we know it’s an illusion, and we know that there’s no answer for them. But the mere fact that they have gotten together, and they will be able to live with their illusion [Dennehy—That’s true] create a certain affirmation. I say it’s the same kind of affirmation in The Iceman Cometh.

Dennehy: Well, it’s a pretty dark affirmation. In The Iceman Cometh, essentially you know these guys are all going to be dead in six months or a year from alcohol poisoning. Now, will they be reasonably happy in those six months? I suppose so. But I wouldn’t call it an affirmation, you know, positive. Look, O’Neill was O’Neill, OK? You know, if you look at O’Neill and you look at Chekov, what does Chekov say? Chekov says the same thing. “It’s all just waiting.” You’re born, you grow up, and you wait. That’s what you do, you wait. Now you may go here, you may go there, you may do this, you may spend a lot of money, buy a house, put your kids in college—what you are really doing is waiting. And, obviously, Beckett says the same thing, and O’Neill says something a little darker, which is “any illusion that you have that you’re not just waiting—you know, for that big black hawk to come out of the sky and slash your throat—are just that, illusions.”