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A home at the end of the world
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Will LeBow and Thomas Derragh. (Photo: Michael Lutch)
The American Repertory Theatre’s current production of Samuel Beckett’s little-staged (but nonetheless classic) Endgame is a puzzling delight.
There are certain things one must understand before seeing a Beckett play. Namely, that it’s not going to make much sense. At least not any outward sense. Even in exceptional productions—as the A.R.T.’s certainly is—there just isn’t a lot of A-to-B-style logic. For as many people as there are in the audience, there will inevitably be that many different interpretations for what has transpired on the stage.
And this, of course, is the beauty of Beckett.
In its current incarnation, which the A.R.T. fittingly bills as “existential vaudeville”, Endgame is the story of four characters living in an empty home poised on the edge of the world, in an undefined time and location. Hamm, the play’s central character, is wheelchair-bound and blind; he cannot stand up. His servant and sidekick, Clov, is a fidgety but endearing buffoon who cannot sit down. And living in two ashbins stage right are Hamm’s amputee parents, Nagg and Nell.
Throughout the 90 minutes of the one-act play, these four people wax philosophical through sparkling exchanges that have the singular power of being simultaneously absurd and stunningly astute. We come to learn that the world outside their sparse little house has all but ended, and now, within those bare white walls, the void is finally creeping its way in.
The quartet of actors are all A.R.T. fixtures. Will LeBow, with his lush basso timbre and dynamic energy, is Hamm. Thomas Derrah winningly inhabits the frenetic body—and even more frenetic mind—of Clov. Remo Airaldi, as Nagg, is by turns funny and devastating. And Karen MacDonald, who, along with Airaldi, was just seen a few weeks ago in The Seagull, is about as far from Madame Arkadina as an actress can get, and, as always, she doesn’t fail to impress.
Under the astute and sensitive direction of Marcus Stern, the players successfully embody these bizarre characters caught up in this most peculiar circumstance. Tossing the esoteric, poetic language of Beckett back and forth in a seamless give-and-take (especially well done between LeBow and Derrah, a vaudevillian dream team performing for Armageddon), the cast presents us with a disturbing, and ridiculously witty, portrait of bleak humanity.
As in most A.R.T. productions, the set design of Endgame is a flawless complement to the intricacies of the script. Designer Andromache Chalfant has built a spare set, minimalist to its very foundation, floating in the midair of an apocalyptic maw.
Walking out of the theatre at play’s end, it’s hard not to try to decipher the grand puzzle that Beckett gave us in Endgame. It deals with such dark themes—death, infirmity, alienation, and that whole end-of-the-world thing—yet it is clearly a big old silly comedy. I guess what Nell says early on is about as satisfying an interpretation of Endgame as one can get: “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that.”
Endgame runs through March 15.
For tickets, showtimes, and venue information: Visit the American Repertory Theatre website.
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