Endgame – 2010
Image © Michael Brosilow
An Exciting Endgame by Trisha Vignola
The Steppenwolf Theatre Company continues its season, exploring the power of belief, with Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Endgame, featuring ensemble members Ian Barford, Francis Guinan, Martha Lavey and William Petersen, runs now through June 6th. Beckett’s absurdist comedy follows Hamm (Petersen), his servant Clov (Barford) and his eccentric parents (Guinan and Lavey), through daily rituals as they await the end of days. Endgame is an examination of the stories humanity constructs to make sense of its role in the larger world.
Endgame is a compelling, well-done production of a really hard play. Beckett wrote Endgame in the decade immediately following World War II and the birth of the atomic bomb, so the play exists on a far deeper level than four people merely stuck in a room. For the first time, humanity was not just questioning mortality in wartime but facing the very real possibility of complete and total annihilation. When Director Frank Galati was charged with bringing this piece to life, I can imagine that he was faced with a two-fold challenge. He had to do justice to Beckett’s treatise on existence as well as produce a straight-out enjoyable comedy – both of which he achieved.
When I first read Endgame back in college, I was not a fan. I found it dense and pretentious. However, I walked away from the show last night with a new found respect for the show. You know the old adage that ninety percent of directing is casting? Nowhere does this ring more true than with Endgame. You cannot get more talented than this cast. They found a musicality in the words, which allowed them to hit all of the humor, no matter how subtle, in the piece. Special note should go to Barford as well as Petersen, who were not only funny but found the humanity in Clov and Hamm respectively.
For a play that relies so much on the poetry of Beckett’s language and a complete lack of set, Galati was also challenged with filling in the “holes” (for lack of a better word) to create this three dimensional world. I absolutely loved the lighting design. I found it very powerful how deliberately lighting was used. Everything served to highlight the cast physically as well as metaphorically. The only place I found this production to be lacking was in the sound design. Endgame is a show that depends on silence. However, I felt that the Downstairs Theatre wasn’t equipped for this. There were too many times where I could not tell if a noise was a part of the show, something going on outside, something going on with the production upstairs or someone’s cell phone going off, which ironically leading me to my final point…
Let’s face it. The chance to see an incredibly dynamic cast, like Endgame, is an honor that does not come along every day. The audience of last night’s show behaved absolutely terribly and made the show incredibly hard to watch. Yeah, Beckett is not an easy playwright to absorb. I get that. However, that does not give you the right to let your cell phone ring multiple times in a show. Unless you are a doctor (and in that case, put it on vibrate), you are not that important. Oh, and the coup de grace? The man next to me was outright heckling William Petersen. What? This isn’t Zannies (and even if it was, that’s still not acceptable). He was outright angry because he didn’t understand why people found the show funny. In fact, he yelled at me at some point for finding the show funny. Ok. I truly understand that Steppenwolf is a subscription house and survives on its patrons. Nevertheless, they don’t own the place. Sometimes, they forget that there is a person sitting three rows behind them, who scraped together money they really didn’t have, to pay full price for the honor of seeing great American theatre. How dare you ruin the show for them? Kudos to William Petersen for keeping the show moving as well as to the folks around this “enlightened” patron for shutting him down.
Online ticketing for Endgame is available at www.steppenwolf.org. Check it out. I doubt you’ll be lucky enough to sit next to that guy.
Steppenwolf delivers Beckett in his essence in ‘Endgame’ by Ted Cox
“Endgame” is a chess term for, well, the end of the game, when most of the pieces are off the board, leaving a sparse landscape of black and white and requiring tactics that are at once elementary and complex.
“Me to play,” says William Petersen in his first line as Hamm, the blind, crippled, domineering centerpiece of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” in a stunning, Spartan new production at Steppenwolf Theatre.
Hamm is at odds with his father and mother and most of all with Clov, his hobbled servant who may or may not be a more intimate relation. These are the only four characters in this bare-boned play. Yet the person playwright Beckett seems to be playing against is primarily himself. “Endgame” is a distillation of the existential themes that had obsessed him previously in his fiction and in “Waiting for Godot,” his acknowledged masterpiece.
“Endgame” is a later, even more mature masterpiece, displaying his craft in its essence, with artifice stripped away amid an apocalyptic landscape and with no wasted words or characters. (Think of the relation of “The Road” to “Blood Meridian” in Cormac McCarthy’s career, or that of “The Old Man and the Sea” to “The Sun Also Rises” in Hemingway’s.) Petersen and his fellow cast mates, reliable Steppenwolf troupers all, share that attitude with not a wasted gesture, and the same goes for director Frank Galati’s overall production.
All serve familiar Beckett themes: an absent if not malevolent God, an obsession with mortality and the body’s decay, an antagonistic sense of nature (both human and otherwise).
“Nature has forgotten us,” Hamm says.
“There is no nature anymore,” replies Clov, played by Ian Barford with a shambling sense of grudging forbearance toward his master.
Francis Guinan, outfitted in a wig better befitting Mad Madam Mim, pops up quite literally out of an ash bin as the aptly named Nagg to deliver his lines with his usual impeccable comic timing. There is comedy in this stark play, and the production and the players find it, with Steppenwolf Artistic Director Martha Lavey uttering perhaps the keynote as Nell when she says, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that.”
Yet it’s Petersen – not hamming it up in what could easily become an overheated actor’s exercise, but simply serving Beckett’s text – who holds center stage with a subtle array of smirks and sneers as Hamm, a most unreliable narrator trying to make sense of what both he and Nell label “this farce, day after day.” Lines echo and are repeated in this compressed, depressed, almost welcomely brief 75-minute play, and the production emphasizes that.
This “Endgame” takes place before a weathered, monolithic gray backdrop, where the actors’ words sometimes literally ring hollow and the lids of the two ash bins – containing and confining dear old Nagg and Nell – give a very satisfactory clang when they slam shut. (Andre Pluess’ sound design might be the most expressive single element of the production.)
“Let it end with a bang of darkness,” Hamm declares, but “Endgame” concludes not like the finale of “The Sopranos,” but on a note of resignation and comic endurance. For all its postwar existential angst, it continues to resonate today, especially in the hands of a company like Steppenwolf, with actors who refuse to sully the prevailing mood by taking so much as a well-deserved bow.
Endgame Review by The Chicago Theater Addict
A warning: if you’re planning to visit your first absurdist, post-apocalyptic Samuel Beckett play, you might want to do a bit of research first. I’ve always heard: some people “get it,” some people don’t. I don’t think that I “don’t” get it — I just need to process it. Which I’m still doing.
Some people revel in Beckett’s minimalist, esoteric wordplay. But, the rest of us? I think we’re relieved when it’s over — especially after a long Thursday at the office. I don’t recall hearing so much yawning and shifting around in seats in the theatre before. A woman in front of my stared at the ceiling for an entire minute, as if to mentally teleport herself away from the pretension. Lucky for us, a 10 second loud burst of microphone static, a technical glitch, came in at just the right time to refocus our attention.
But there’s something to be said about a play that confounds you so much that the first thing you do is hurry back home to do your research. Do I have a better understanding of the play? Yes and no.
But I won’t bore you (or embarrass myself) with my premature analysis.
I can say this is a straightforward production that avoids any fuss or trickery. Director Frank Galati keeps the action focused on the words and carefully scripted pauses. William Peterson, of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fame, plays Hamm, our petulant protagonist for the evening, who has holed himself up in a small room while the rest of the world has apparently sunken into the sea (or something?). Peterson is a smart actor, and embodies this dominating and pathetic character with a perpetual twinkle in his eye — which is amazing since he wears tinted spectacles throughout. Hamm, who can’t walk and is blind, depends entirely on his spineless, subservient servant, Clov (a disheveled Ian Barford), who he orders around to accomplish all sorts of inane tasks. Francis Guinan and Steppenwolf Artistic Director Martha Lavey are the legless, nagging parents of Hamm’s, who are trapped (or protected?) in barrels. They pop out to lament on their situation, and when Hamm’s had his fill, he sets Clov to close their lids, “bottling” them in. This futile action goes on in repetition while Hamm and Clov wait for “the end”: i.e. death.
It’s well acted and confidently directed, with an appropriately grim set design by James Schuette. But it’s a puzzle I’m still mulling over. Is it all a meaningless game in the end? Who knows. Has Beckett pulled the wool over our eyes, much like Hamm, who covers his face with a handkerchief when Clov abandons him (but also doesn’t?)? Your guess is as good as mine.
Game, set, Beckett: Samuel Beckett’s eccentric Endgame arrives at the Steppenwolf by Stephanie Sanford of Loyola Phoenix
The set is minimal and grim: one decrepit throne with wheels, two lofty windows and two dusty ashbins. Despite this bleak setting, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, now onstage at the Steppenwolf Theatre, comes to life through its four vibrant actors and fruitfully comical plot.
Hamm (William Petersen of CSI) is a blind king who cannot stand and is dependent on his servant Clov (Ian Barford), who is unable to sit. They interact like a bickering old couple: tired of being together, yet they are stuck in a routine and utterly reliant on one another. Clov takes any chance he gets to defy Hamm, like stomping his feet to sound like he is walking instead of actually doing it at the request of Hamm.
Hamm is very self-absorbed, always wanting to tell a story and have somebody — usually his parents — listen to him. Hamm’s parents Nagg (Francis Guinan) and Nell (Martha Lavey) live in ashbins and can only be seen from the chest up because they lost their legs in a bicycle accident. Like two roommates in a nursing home, they have only each other for company, except for the times Hamm wants them to listen to his stories.
The relationship between Nagg and Nell is very entertaining to watch. Nagg is like Nell’s son in that he likes to tell stories, and Nell only sort of listens. Lavey’s Nell has the least amount of stagetime due to her untimely death, but she is easily the strongest presence on stage. Lavey radiates a certain kind of wisdom that makes Nell a particularly captivating character. Although only one character dies in the play, all the characters are essentially waiting for the end: the end of the world, the end of their lives and the end of this strange purgatory.
William Petersen left CSI in 2009, and, with his hair graying, has begun to show his age. The makeup was applied tactfully to emphasize his lack of sight. Petersen is wholly convincing as the egocentric blind king. His costume reminded me of a tatty Hugh Hefner with a 1920’s style spin.
Clov, played by Ian Barford, also effectively portrayed a man walking with a gimp, yearning to break free from Hamm. Clov was certainly not a static character: His mocking of Hamm contributed to a large portion of the hilarity. His worn out slacks, suspenders and henley shirt reminded me of something Tom Joad might have worn in The Grapes of Wrath.
Endgame, while abstract and open to interpretation, brims with acerbic wit. Indeed, director Frank Galati even describes the play as a family comedy.
Endgame Review by Barry Eltel of Chicago Theater Blog
If there was an emblematic play of the 20th-century, it very well could be Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. The play captures defining aspects of the past hundred years: the unspeakable horror, the monotony, the inclination towards self-reference. The human crisis is all there, presented as a 75-minute nihilistic chess game (sort of). Steppenwolf throws some of their best talent at Beckett for their production of Endgame. Frank Galati directs, and the play features Ian Barford, William Petersen, Martha Lavey, and Francis Guinan. Steppenwolf concocts a recipe for on-stage brilliance—great theatre artists working with one of the greatest playwrights of all time. The existentialism sure can get depressing, but the talent involved here is a marvel.
Beckett’s earlier Waiting for Godot is far more accessible and probably more inherently funny. I would put forth, though, that Endgame is the better play. It’s more primal, more desperate. Complete despair looms just out of reach. The world is dense and merely getting through each day seems the ultimate goal for everybody. This is still pretty hard—one guy can’t stand, one guy can’t sit, and two folks are amputees living in garbage cans.
Galati doesn’t throw any crazy tricks at the play; there is nothing here that would invite legal action from the Beckett estate. Hamm (William Petersen), the protagonist as Beckett points out in his character description, sits blind and regal in a throne/DIY wheelchair. His parents, Nell (Martha Lavey) and Nagg (Francis Guinan), live in non-descript trashcans. They’re all serviced by the only mobile inhabitant, Clov (Ian Barford). In typical Beckett fashion, Sammy has constantly denied that the play is post-nuclear apocalypse. James Schuette’s drab set tiptoes around this fact, however, and places the play in an underground room that looks a lot like a fallout shelter. The set works wonders for the play; Schuette doesn’t distract from Beckett’s language but still throws in his own thematic two cents (the dingy room also looks uncannily like the inside of a face).
Petersen and Barford conquer the stage with their intricate chemistry. The relationship between Hamm and Clov is one of the most complex and layered ever penned for the stage. Seen through the chess-metaphor lens, Hamm is a losing king, commanding around the only pawn he has left. But Hamm also suggests ‘hammer,’ and Clov is often linked to the Latin word for ‘nail’ (clavus, for the Latin nerds out there—Nag and Nell’s names also connect to various European terms for nail). And no one can deny the father-son dynamic between the two.
For the past few year, Petersen seems set on proving that he’s not just a television actor by treating Chicago to wonderful performances in Dublin Carol (our review ★★★½) and the considerably twisted Blackbird (our review ★★★½) at Victory Gardens. Even though he is stationary and clad in sunglasses, Petersen glides through Beckett’s world as the lonely king. It’s a delight watching him play off Barford, who makes an infinitely relatable Clov. Stuck in a metal drum, Guinan commands our attention whenever he pops open his lid. He’s an ancient relic yet as helpless as a child. For the short bit she’s in, Lavey does good work feeding on Guinan’s vulnerability and hot temper.
Galati clearly knows this game. However, the production seems to favor the philosopher Beckett instead of the clown. While this forces us to contemplate our own mortality (isn’t this everyone’s ideal Friday night plan?), everything gets a little too mired in the existential muck. As bleak as it is, though, there is a ton of genius at work over at the Steppenwolf right now. It is well worth a glimpse, even if you also have to stare at your own imminent demise.
Steppenwolf’s engaging production of Endgame finds comedy in despair by Jake Lindquist of Chicago Critic
The work of Samuel Beckett is something that has always intrigued and frustrated me at the same time, and the play Endgame is no exception. My first experience with this play was a poorly done recording which made the play seem empty, boring, and soulless. The second time I saw it was in Bulgaria (in Bulgarian), and although it was a fine performance I could not understand any of the dialogue. This third trip into the world of Endgame was the first time I truly saw the genius of this play. Director Frank Galati and this fine ensemble of actors have done what not enough people do with the work of Samuel Beckett: Find the humor and be specific.
In true Beckett form, hardly anything happens, yet there is so much going on. The entire action takes place in a blank interior where Hamm (William Petersen), a blind man unable to stand, and his servant Clov (Ian Barford), who is unable to sit, go through their daily rituals and await the end of everything. They are also pestered by Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell (Francis Guinan and Martha Lavey) who live in a pair of cylindrical containers awaiting the end of their lives. Similarly to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot these characters are all awaiting something: death, freedom, happiness, pills, food, etc… However, these characters are trapped in a condensed world rather than the expanse void of Godot, which makes the action more intimate. It is as if the characters are aware of the presence of the audience, yet they do nothing different from every other day. The audience is the voyeur, but the characters don’t mind. The other beauty of Beckett is his rhythm; everything (including pauses, rests, and movements) are written into the script. A Beckett play is like a piece of music, the notes are the same every time but each performance is different depending on the musicians (actors) and conductor (director). Mr. Galati has taken these expert musicians and created a piece of music that resonates at a level high above the average production of this play. It is music to my ears.
The cast is fantastic across the board. William Petersen has an interesting take on Hamm, as being less cruel than others I have seen. He does not bark orders with his voice, but rather with his whistle. He displays awareness that he does not have to bark orders because they will be obeyed regardless. Ian Barford’s Clov is sympathetic and brooding, following orders without question but taking advantage of Hamm’s disabilities at times. You can not help at laugh because they act like an old married couple trapped in habit. Francis Guinan and Martha Lavey are hilarious as Nagg and Nell, bringing affecting and multi-layered performances. Just like Hamm and Clov, you can not help but laugh at them, even though you feel sorry for them. When glancing at Beckett dialogue it is easy to get caught in the rhythm and ignore the fact that every line has a meaning under it. Every actor understands every line they say, which translates directly to the audience understanding and appreciating the play (even if they don’t fully understand the “plot”). I have heard many colleagues and friends call Beckett “boring,” but this production is funny, moving, thought-provoking, and above all, entertaining. It is an enjoyable evening that also gives you plenty to talk about. It is simply wonderful.
If you have had previous reservations or prejudices regarding the work of Samuel Beckett, this is your chance to see him in a new light. This is far and away the most accessible production of a Beckett play I have ever had the pleasure to experience, and one that I feel should be attended by anyone who has always wondered why Samuel Beckett is one of the greatest playwrights of all time. You may not fully understand what happens, but there’s a pretty darn good chance you’ll walk away moved. Samuel Beckett is one of the most produced playwrights in the world, but the odds of seeing a production like this are unlikely. Do yourself a favor, if you have any prejudices, throw them away and go see this production of Endgame. It may be the only chance you have to see a Samuel Beckett play performed in the way it was meant to be performed.
Time Out Theater Review of Endgame by Kris Vire
“You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that,” says Hamm, the petulant, blind invalid at the center of Beckett’s 1957 follow-up to Waiting for Godot. By “at the center,” we mean literally: After any sojourn in his makeshift wheelchair, Hamm takes pains to make his long-suffering servant Clov set him right back at the center of their empty room, not too far left or right nor forward or back. The two share this space at the end of the world—“Nature has forsaken us,” Hamm says, to which Clov retorts, “There is no more nature”—with Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, who pop up Oscar the Grouch–style from trash bins to take verbal abuse from their son and try to remember better times.
Whether those better times really were, or have simply ripened in memory, is one of the play’s major questions. “Nothing’s funnier than unhappiness, I’ll grant you,” says Nell, who rejects Nagg’s insistence that she once whooped with laughter at a story of his. “It was because I felt happy,” she says. This passage between Guinan and Lavey is perhaps the most affecting of Galati’s honest, straightforward production (no Akalaitis-like showmanship here). As Hamm, Petersen acknowledges the suggestion of his character’s name without overdoing it, exercising his range in ways that neither his TV years nor his recent outings in Dublin Carol and Blackbird allowed. And Barford skillfully drives the action as the put-upon Clov. Galati and his actors sparingly find the sweet spot between dark humor and simple darkness; if you leave without contemplating your own eventual end, you haven’t been paying attention.
‘Endgame’ at Steppenwolf Theatre: The right sort of grimness to spur the imagination by Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune
Trying to interpret Samuel Beckett’s absurdist classic “Endgame,” the subject of the latest Steppenwolf Theatre production to star the new and very game ensemble member William Petersen, is both an irresistibly juicy exercise of the mind and a total fool’s game.
Perhaps this 1957 play — just 75 minutes long but second only to “Waiting for Godot” in the respect it commands among Beckett aficionados — is set in the aftermath of some nuclear holocaust, for the characters make reference to it being death beyond the walls that confine them. Maybe it’s supposed to be the world inside our own skulls, for there are little high windows that look like eyes and a step ladder for a nose. Or perchance, as the title would imply, the game of chess is the central metaphor. One character, Hamm, acts like a king, moving one square at a time; his assistant Clov hops around like a nervous knight; and Hamm’s parents, the legless Nagg and Nell, reside inside ash cans that look a lot like rooks.
Or maybe it’s mostly a self-referential riff on theater. “What is there to keep me here?” asks Clov, played by Ian Barford. “The dialog,” replies Petersen’s Hamm, only one letter removed from being the worst kind of actor.
And at that moment in director Frank Galati’s deeply intelligent production, one can detect a little twinkle in Petersen’s eye. Or you imagine you could. If his tyrannical, self-absorbed character wasn’t blind and wearing sunglasses.
Beckett would have approved. He built into “Endgame” plenty of jabs at himself, including, surely, a reference to his own inclination to look at a world where others find loveliness and see only ashes.
Other playwrights get all frothed up trying to make us care, emote, understand. Beckett merely distills all of the neuroses of others into a series of lean epigrams, taut observations and deft truisms. It’s hard to think of a more precise 20th-century drama.
Yet “Endgame” is a tough assignment for a director. Aside from negotiating its minefield of metaphors, similes and power-relationships, it’s not like you can mess with much in service of some new conceptual splash. Not unless you want a lawsuit from the Beckett estate. They were pretty precise about the words, beats and the environment, those absurdists and their defenders, which is one of the reasons why you could make the case that this script is of more literary than theatrical value. It certainly reigns in some of that famous Steppenwolf inclination to tear down all the walls.
Nonetheless, Galati’s production contains much of value and, in a few well-chosen spots, some revelations.
The aptly bleak design from James Schuette takes full advantage of those soaring vertical lines at the Steppenwolf, as well as the black pit in front of the stage that in this case stands guard like a protective moat (or depressing void).
The play’s famous ash cans are shorter than usual, an apt reminder that the oldsters who live inside them have lost their legs (those tandems can be dangerous). Their occupants, played by Francis Guinan and Martha Lavey, feel like full emotional creations, even though we can see only their heads, peering over the rims. When Guinan talks about how the sawdust that once filled his home has now been replaced with mere sand (things are always getting worse in Beckett plays), it is as if he’s talking about being laid off, or becoming obliged to use pills to enhance sexual performance, or some other affront to male dignity.
But the most powerful, and revealing, moments of this production come courtesy of Barford, an actor who has completely mastered characters who crave freedom but lack the guts to tell those who oppress them to go to hell (Clov has a surprising amount in common with Little Charles in “August: Osage County”).
Toward the climax of “Endgame,” when we wonder if Clov will ever get out from under his surely less-than-omnipotent master, Barford screws up his face and summons up an emblem of every down-trodden plebe who can’t quite abandon his needy oppressor.
It’s quite the visceral moment in a play that suggests that the power relationships that dominate our lives are just another avoidance mechanism. It made me think of everything from elderly relations, to my own ego, to how life is too darn short to take anything on the chin. And that’s the right kind of mental list to trot out. Barford might make you quit your job, so watch out.
Petersen, whose Hamm presides from a velvet-colored chair like some provincial Shakespearean hack, starts out seemingly bemused by the whole enterprise. But it is invariably a mistake to underestimate what Petersen, who wields his stage power carefully and shrewdly, is going to do, and he gets most deliciously excised when Clov starts talking about taking away Hamm’s pain-killers.
If you are going to find a dramatic crisis in “Endgame,” the moment when the pain killers run out is probably as good as any. Everything here is a pain killer: the chatter, the memories, the dependencies, the tyrannies. As in life, none of them can be trusted.
Steppenwolf makes sense of Beckett’s perplexing ‘Endgame’ by Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times
Playwright Samuel Beckett specialized in gazing into the void. A great literary undertaker in the blackly comic tradition of a long line of Irish writers, he set himself apart from the rest by ruthlessly stripping away all the decorative niceties of existence and suggesting that in the final analysis (and it always is “final”), life might well be completely meaningless.
In fact, if you take Beckett at face value, he didn’t see much difference between life and death. The former was just one painful step in the direction of the latter. And if you were waiting for some sort of salvation on the road to the cemetery, some word from God — well, your expectations were bound to be dashed. Talk about sick jokes.
And so we have director Frank Galati’s take on “Endgame,” Beckett’s 80-minute drama about parents and children, and about man’s treatment of his wider circle of fellow creatures, now receiving a clear, thoughtful, alternately mysterious and comic production at Steppenwolf Theatre. Though not entirely transfixing, it certainly has many inspired moments when both the spare beauty of the playwright’s language and the rough physical humor of his characters are in full play.
In its meditation on family relationships, on human codependence and on the nature (some might say the utter futility) of human existence, “Endgame” is quite unlike anything else. Frankly, you either love Beckett or run from him like the plague — find him brutally honest, almost endearing in his sense of life’s tragicomedy, or you find him beyond impenetrable and, despite his concision, tedious. I’m a fan.
“Endgame” is set in a dank room with two tiny windows set high in a fortresslike wall. An offstage kitchen might once have supplied sustenance, but there is barely a crumb left there now. Even the medicine (painkillers, of course) has run out.
Gazing through the windows with a telescope, one of the room’s inhabitants reports seeing a barren, obviously post-apocalyptic landscape where even the waves of the sea appear to have vanished. Not surprisingly, Beckett wrote this play in the wake of the Holocaust and the first use of the atomic bomb. Yes, we all were once actors on this planet — making our entrances, engaging in our little life dramas, and then waiting for our inevitable exits. But the commedia may, indeed, be fully finished now.
Hamm (William L. Petersen, exceedingly eloquent and imperious as the character whose Biblical name suggests both Noah’s son and a “hammy,” overemoting actor) is the blind, wheelchair-bound father here, though his “parents” — the alcoholic Nag (Francis Guinan) and his dreamily romantic wife, Nell (Martha Lavey) — are confined to covered trash bins, and might still exist, either in some nursing home or perhaps just his guilty conscience. Clov is his childless “surrogate son.” An Ian Barford gives a physically and emotionally superb portrayal as this fellow who has been treated like a servant for most of his life, and who now is full of activity and resentment, and unable to sit down.
Should one or the other of them commit murder or suicide? Would these be nothing but mercy killings anyway? Is it even possible to prevail against the impossibly strong instinct for survival — to have that last desire fulfilled, that last itch scratched, that last word of soothing validation? What do we owe our fellow human beings? And will the absurd self-absorption, self-pity, disgust and pain ever abate?
The design team (James Schuette, James F. Ingalls, Andre Pluess) has captured the mindset. Beckett and the actors mine the conundrums (and refuse to take bows at the show’s end).
Review “Endgame”: Beckett’s Profound Absurdity by Katy Walsh, The Fourth Walsh at Chicago Now
‘Ending is the beginning.’ ‘Time is zero.’ ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.’ Nobel Prize-winning playwright Samuel Beckett penned a one act play with moments of profound absurdity. Steppenwolf Theatre presents ENDGAME directed by ensemble member Frank Galati. The epitome of a dysfunctional relationship, Clov is indentured to Hamm. Hamm is a bitter, needy disabled man. Clov is a victim of emotional abuse. Shut away in a stark fortress, they exist without really living. Their lives are routines of the same questions and same answers. Also, bottled up, literally, with them in the home are Hamm’s aging parents longing for yesterday. ENDGAME makes a sport of laughing about nothing.
For theatre goers that like a plot, ENDGAME isn’t a good match. For those willing to put the puzzle together without looking at the box top, Beckett and Galati join forces to make it an interesting activity. Under Galati’s masterful direction, Beckett’s often meaningless prose is heightened for a laugh. William Petersen (Hamm) plays the ludicrous blind man to perfection. His moment of “little right…little left…little center” is maddeningly ridiculous. As soon as Hamm’s awake, Ian Barford (Clov) goes from light-hearted giggler to oppressed servant. His moments of unseen rebellion are mischievously amusing. In smaller roles,Francis Guinan (Nagg) and Martha Lavey (Nell) are an odd tribute to the treatment of the aged.
A massive sheet serving as a curtain is raised to reveal similar sheets covering a set with minimal objects. It’s a dramatic visual designed by James Schuette. The silly twist is uncovering a sheet clad Petersen to see a miniature sheet on his face. It’s another moment of finding the funny in Beckett’s farce. What was Beckett’s end game? Does this play have a point? Is this a poignant tale of life’s irrelevance? Or was Beckett absurd for his own amusement? Maybe it’s just about a clove being necessary to add flavor to ham.
A man with little tolerance for the absurd, Bill sums up the experience in three word: “glad it ended.”
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