Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Thursday night: it was a funny experience watching a play I had heard and read so much about without ever having watched or read it. I felt all the time that I had seen it before but that the present performance was different from what I thought I knew. For one thing, this Godot had four characters (and a boy who brought word that Godot was not coming that day) when I thought there were supposed to be two. For another, it was much funnier than I had expected. Nathan Lane played an articulate and despairing Estragon, Bill Irwin played an irascible Vladimir, John Goodman played a hapless Pozzo, and John Glover played a pathetic and ferocious Lucky. They were terrific clowns, entertaining the audience as much as they entertained themselves, to occupy the time while waiting for Godot.  Tied to Pozzo literally by a string, Lucky was cuffed around like a slave, but would kill anyone who tried to free him. It was better to belong to someone than to no one. A funny and sad moment came ...

from Sarah Churchwell's review of Julie Kavanagh's Rudolf Nureyev: The biography : . . . Carlyle's much-disputed definition of genius as "the transcendental capacity for taking pains, first of all", . . . *** from John Peter's review of performances of Harold Pinter's "The Lover", "The Collection", and "The Homecoming": Most of Pinter's characters have two personalities but do not know this, deny it, or observe it with hostility, or fear, or both. But your personality is not your character, not your identity. Personality is what reveals your character, recommends it, covers it up or gives it away. It can suggest that you have no definable character, no central self, no concrete identity.