Galway International Arts Festival 2024: For Druid’s Endgame, Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan are immersed in Beckett. It’s surpringly enjoyable, they say
Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan take on Beckett: ‘To understand Endgame is to understand that you can’t understand Endgame’
Michael McGrath: ‘Nothing is ever as it seems. We’ve ended up with seven children, but we had loss along the way’ Fintan O’Toole: Druid’s magnificent new staging of the O’Casey trilogy should be a source of national pride “It’s very rare to have someone who you can work with so closely, that is completely on the same wavelength in all the right ways. And also will challenge you in all the other ways. So if I don’t see something I will say to Aaron, ‘Just stand out of this and have a look at this,’ or ‘Have a listen,’ and he might do that to me as well, if we’re maybe struggling with a scene.”
In their early careers there were far more Irish professional theatre companies, and plenty of work. “People were taking chances on younger actors, and we were getting big parts in our early and mid-20s. That’s where you cut your teeth,” Nolan says. After the crash, companies didn’t take risks in the same way, instead employing the tried and tested.
Although the pair are great friends, they aren’t in daily contact. Nolan jokes, “I’d ring him after two weeks: ‘You don’t love me?’” Like in the play. He quotes: “‘You don’t love me ... You loved me once.’ That’s kind of familiar to us.”Rory Nolan , Garrett Lombard , Marty Rea and Aaron Monaghan in Druid Theatre Company's production of Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, directed by Garry Hynes.
Nolan agrees. “To understand Endgame is to understand that you can’t understand Endgame.” He says he’s paraphrasing Theodor Adorno’s essay Trying to Understand Endgame. “We did 300 or whatever performances of Godot” – Nolan played Pozzo – “and I always heard something else. It never got dull. The thing about Godot or Beckett or Endgame is, the closer you think you’re getting to understanding him, the further he eludes you. To pin it down is doing it a disservice.
Fintan O’Toole, from the Irish Times archive: DruidSynge is one of the greatest achievements in the history of Irish theatre
Druid-Theatre-Company Rory-Nolan Aaron-Monaghan Garry-Hynes Samuel-Beckett
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