Pessimism and Other Crowd Pleasers

The midsummer moment seemed absurdist enough for Samuel Beckett: a woman launched into monotone observations amid a Midtown crowd on Tenth Avenue. She turned out to be discreetly scalping tickets to a sought-after dramatic reading of Beckett. They were snapped up in minutes on the theater steps, as if the deal were the Boss in open air, not Ralph Fiennes performing Beckett in signature gloom.
A case of “Worstward Ho,” as the laureate once despaired of humanity? More likely an endorsement of his grim concession: “Words are all we have.” Either way, it was an encouraging scene in the city’s fifth season — the one in which so many residents flee on vacation that those remaining have room to re-hone their appetite for this place.
The Beckett crowd, so avid on the way in, so musing on the way out, was worth attention. So were the two young men bearing surfboards, grinning obliviously as they crammed onto a subway car of angry passengers. (“I can’t go on. I’ll go on,” was applicable choreography from Beckett.)
Witnessing the city’s resilient turnings led to quarreling with him, too. (“The sun shone having no alternative on the nothing new.”). Wrong. Look over there in the sunshine of Columbus Circle at that sidewalk table of what seem to be evangelicals working the city throng. On closer inspection, they turn out to be volunteers from NYC Atheists Inc. — laid-back, amiable disbelievers — manning their weekly post outside the circle’s luxury shopping mall.
The sighting bolsters the fable of the city’s possessing a melting-pot soul. But a few blocks away, Mr. Fiennes is in firm soul denial on stage, portraying a life-worn Beckett grumbler. The mix of words and silence is spellbinding. It survives the sacrilege of someone’s cellphone ringing amid a deep riff of pessimism. The effect afterward is to make the city feel even more itself; outside, the streets are brighter for fallibility.