NYFF Review: In One More Time, André Gregory Shares a Moving Curtain Call

At the beginning of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Endgame, a blind curmudgeon named Hamm declares, “It’s time it ended and yet I hesitate to—to end.” Confined to a chair, he bickers with his servant Clov in a house where the two are tucked away from the post-apocalyptic wasteland outside their window. The one-act play’s rich history includes four productions starring Larry Pine and Gerry Bamman—themselves members of the Manhattan Project, a theater company founded by impresario André Gregory. Decades later, their credits are extensive and varied for both stage and screen. Now in their 80s and 90s, the trio challenge themselves to return to the play they first staged in their 20s.

Directed by Gregory’s longtime partner and collaborator Cindy Kleine, One More Time is a personal document that looks back at the work of three accomplished thespians and reckons in the present with their shared mortality. For those already familiar with Gregory’s work leading the Manhattan Project, it serves as a fitting tribute and curtain call, but the uninitiated may have a tough time connecting.

Gregory began as an avant-garde theater director who found success in the eclectic arts scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Writing in the New York Times, renowned theater critic Clive Barnes called the Manhattan Project’s 1973 production of Endgame “one of the best things in the American theater.” Like any good artist, Gregory was no stranger to controversy and had strong opinions on the state of American theater, which were famously elaborated in Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre. As relevant as it is to a retrospective, much of this context is absent from One More Time. No mention of Pine’s kaleidoscopic credits (from TV soaps to film auteurs) or those of his character actor colleague Bamman, who many will know best for calling Macaulay Culkin a little jerk in Home Alone. The looks back at their shared history are focused on stage collaborations while footage of youthful days provide a matching bookend to their reunion.

For their final return to Endgame, they convene at Pine’s home, which also acts as the venue for their project. The years have saddled the once-kinetic Bamman with mobility issues and Pine with Alzheimer’s. Pine brings Endgame in a beaten-up edition that he estimates is a half-century old, but the years of inculcation are no match for his memory loss; at one point we see him frustratingly struggle to recite a line that was passed along moments before.

It’s satisfying to hear Gregory’s interstitial commentary on the piece, which he considers the most difficult play ever written. His deal with the Beckett estate allows him to use a portion of Endgame—a selection of excerpts that will show the play’s essence—for this project. As performed in their filmed rehearsals, that essence is difficult to identify. Beckett’s text is overwhelmed by the curious project itself—partly for its fragmented composition, partly for the casual nature of its presentation. The two actors are shown in alternating, awkwardly edited close-ups that silo them and breaks any notion of their shared space. Their unique challenge is most successful in utilizing Endgame’s significance and themes as a coda to the trio’s decades-long partnership.

As filmed in 2025, Endgame’s apocalyptic setting is mapped by Gregory onto Los Angeles’ Eaton Fires and the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. Like the characters Clov and Hamm, the three confine themselves to Pine’s home as the world burns around them. Hamm and Clov’s interactions are repetitive, just as Pine and Bamman’s are as performers of the roles. Their multiple renditions of the piece are an ouroboros, reflected in lines like “the end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” And the end-is-near motif is felt more acutely by the elderly company during this project than any of their previous attempts. Gregory plainly states “we don’t leave the house into a world that has 40 years in it.”

One More Time is like a band reunion where the members convene to play through one of their beloved works for the last time. It’s a deserved celebration for the years of contributions and work they shared. But it’s important to know the band, or at least the record.

One More Time screened at the 2026 New York Film Festival.