Samuel Beckett and John Turturro together for the first time. Actually, I’m not sure about that. Turturro has probably done plenty of Beckett. April 25 – May 18th at BAM.

“You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.” How true, and when uttered by John Turturro’s Hamm, these words have a raw and awesome power. An always-outstanding favorite of film directors like Spike Lee and the Coen brothers, Turturro endows one of Beckett’s most affecting works with emotional urgency, creating a man who, confined to an old armchair on wheels and unable to see, registers as poignant, deeply sardonic, and proud. Directed by Andrei Belgrader, master of comic and absurdist stagecraft, each character—from Hamm to his recalcitrant manservant Clov, to his ashcan-dwelling parents—wrestles with cosmic questions. Acutely aware that death is inescapable, they remain divinely valiant in the face of it.