Theatre Thursday: Endgame

Another post about a play by Samuel Beckett. If you haven't yet read anything of his, please do so right now.* He's brilliant. His most famous work is Waiting for Godot, but Endgame is pretty much right up there with it.

Credit: Ardmore Studios

Endgame follows a wacky and depressing cast of characters: Hamm, who is blind and unable to stand up, Hamm's servant Clov, who is unable to sit down, and Hamm's parents, Nagg and Nell, both of whom have no legs and live in separate trash cans filled with sawdust.

The four of them sit in a single room (except for Clov, who sometimes goes into his little kitchen) and basically try to get through each day. One way the play can be viewed is as a giant chess game orchestrated by Hamm. "Endgame" is a reference to the endgame in chess - the final sequence of moves during which the outcome of the game is already inevitable.

Another way to interpret this is as a sort of weird play within a play. There's quite a bit of evidence for this, from Hamm cryptically saying "Me to... play" several times (which also goes along with the whole chess thing), and later stating that he is making an "aside," to Clov's turning his telescope to look at the audience (and telling Hamm that's there's nothing there) or later informing Hamm that he is "making an exit."

The dialogue in this play is brilliant. The exchanges between Hamm and Clov are clever and poignant and occasionally very funny, and the conversations between Nagg and Nell are heartbreakingly sweet. I'll admit, reading this play made me feel a little bit anxious, perhaps because of the premise of the play or the way it's written. But it's so good. Beckett is capable of make one feel like he or she really is stuck in this room with these poor people, trying not to go mad(der).

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* And once you've finished reading Beckett's plays, it's imperative that you see them as well. Beckett on Film is great if you can get your hands on a copy - it's got every one of Beckett's plays and features lots of famous directors and actors; every play I've watched in the collection (probably about ten out of the nineteen total) has been excellent.