Alan Mandell, star of ‘Godot’ and other Beckett plays, dies at 98
“It was in his DNA,” said Michael Arabian, who directed him in “Godot” at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2012. Mr. Mandell played Estragon, one of the play’s two tramps (Vladimir, played by Barry McGovern, is the other) who await salvation from Godot, who never appears. “Mandell at 84 is as spry as a man half his age,” critic Charles McNulty wrote in The Los Angeles Times. “But his pratfalls are those of someone with too much experience to pretend that bruises don’t hurt and beatings are a laugh riot. His comedy echoes down a corridor of years.”Get Starting PointA guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter EmailMr. Mandell’s introduction to Beckett came around 1956 when he was the business manager of the Actor’s Workshop of San Francisco. One of its founders, Herbert Blau, sent a copy of the “Godot” script from Europe. “I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was reading,” Mr. Mandell told the Working Actor’s Journey podcast in 2019. He awaited Blau’s return to explain it. In early 1957, the workshop performed “Godot” to acclaim at a theater in San Francisco; later that year, Mr.
