I listened to an interesting interview with Barry McGovern on National Radio this morning.
HERE
He's bringing an adaptation of Samuel Beckett's novel WATT to New Zealand to the Auckland Arts Festival in March next year. I must make booking to see this.
Beckett has, to me and others I know, been very difficult to understand. McGovern, in the interview by Kim Hill said that Beckett, on the contrary is extremely easy to understand and that most people over-complicate things in their own minds. He said that WAITING FOR GODOT for example was a play about waiting and that ENDGAME is about leaving. He said that children find Beckett very simple and that adults find him very complicated. The answer is somewhere in between.
McGovern should know since he's spent a lifetime interpreting and acting Beckett's works. He also said that James Joyce is very easy to read as well and again he should know as he's very familiar with Joyce's works as well. Mind you, I've read ULYSSES and struggled through FINNEGANS WAKE and wouldn't describe either as easy.
If you go to the National Radio link then also have a look at the link to GAME OF THRONES where McGovern played a minor but very interesting part as a dying farmer. He said that a couple of the writers who have doctorates in literature were Beckett and Joyce scholars and knew of his work so wrote a piece for him in the series. Interesting and shows that it's easy to discount something because it's popular even though the people behind it are very clever.
Along with GAME OF THRONES I put THE SOPRANOS and BREAKING BAD forward as well (but leave out Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger stuff).
