Beckett's "Endgame' at the Arden (2nd review)

Samuel Beckett's Endgame is now a classic text of the theater, as much a part of our cultural texture as Hamlet or Three Sisters. That doesn't mean that audiences have much of a clue as to what it's about, though.

The Arden Theatre, in mounting the first Beckett production in its 25-year history, has tried to make it a bit more user-friendly. The set, which features a collapsed highway ramp with a car dangling over the edge, is meant to be a more contemporary version of the atomic apocalypse that Beckett presumably had in mind for his staging; and the casting of an African-American, James ljames, in the role of Clov, is also intended as a homey touch.

The facilitator who led the post-performance discussion I attended suggested that Beckett had embedded a family drama in the play, and that Edward Sobel's direction was intended to bring out its "story" elements.

All of which goes to show you what happens in the theater when the half-hour TV sitcom becomes the standard of dramatic presentation.

Beyond Chekhov

I think I could make a fair case, if not necessarily an adequate one, for Beckett as Chekhov plus music-hall patter. Chekhov is the presiding genius of the modern theater because he recognized that drama involved not a story but a situation, and that the situation had no resolution— things might worsen over the course of the play, even terminally, but the situation remains the same. The identical thing happens with Beckett.

When Waiting for Godot ends, the two tramps are exactly where they were at the beginning of the play: "astride of a grave" as Didi puts it, waiting for a new day that will be, a mishap more or less, just what the previous one was. They enact, in short, a ritual, and the same is true of Hamm and Clov in Endgame.

Gogo in Godot and Clov in Endgame both threaten to leave— that is, to break out of the situation— but both fail to do so. The modern stage is, simply, a place whose characters are unable to leave.

Beckett's demands

Beckett himself, as is well known, forbade any performance alteration in his script, setting or direction, and he disavowed (if he could not legally block) any production that failed to follow his instructions to the letter. As a playwright myself, I can sympathize with this insistence, especially in an age when theaters often seem to regard the dramatic text as the least significant element of a production.

It isn't realistic to clip the wings of posterity, however, or even of one's own time, and in Beckett's case it is least necessary of all, since his texts are so strong as to be virtually tamper-proof: You can change the set or the actor's skin color, but you can't, given the least commitment to performability, change the play.

So, what is the situation of Endgame? Hamm and Clov live together in what might be a basement or a bomb shelter or, as here, in the shadow of a wreck. Hamm, the dominant protagonist, is blind and confined to a wheelchair; he orders Clov, who appears to be a manservant of some sort, to perform the daily tasks that constitute their ritual.

Like a Shakespeare king

Clov also enacts some obsessive (but not necessary impulsive) routines of his own: He always does the same thing and always seems to find it new. This habit endows him with a slightly subhuman character, like a dog that fetches a stick as if it's never seen one thrown before. Clov resents Hamm, but he's dependent on Hamm's orders, precisely because they are orders.

On the most obvious level, of course, Hamm gives his orders because he can do nothing for himself; but his wheelchair is also a throne, because to command is his nature, just as to obey is Clov's. I think of Hamm in fact as a kind of Shakespearean king down on his luck, like Lear, but never without a last faithful servant.

Beckett gives a hint of this himself in the line that quotes Prospero: "Our revels now are ended." Like everything in Beckett, this seems a throwaway line, because nothing that is said or done can alter the play's situation; the point is precisely that the "revels" have no end, but only endlessly recycle themselves.

Packing to leave

That Beckett quotes The Tempest rather than, say, King Lear, is significant too. Hamm's shelter is a kind of island, and, like Prospero, he casts down his staff at the end. Clov, too, is a Caliban figure, unable to return to his savage ways.

One needn't push the parallel too far, of course, because Beckett is dealing in archetypes, not conventional characters. If we discover anything about Hamm, it is that he is a monologist— that is, a speaker who is content with himself as audience.

When, at the end of the play, Clov packs to leave for good (but doesn't go), Hamm must assume that he is left alone, since he cannot see or turn. He must therefore— if we are participating in a "story"— panic, because the person on whom all his needs depend is gone, and because there is no longer anyone to command. Yet Hamm gives not the least sign of perturbation; as long as a single object is left in the world— in this case the handkerchief that covers his face (the Arden has made it a newspaper, which ruins the effect of Hamm's describing it as "old stancher")— he needs nothing more.

Parental suffering

There are two other figures in the play, Hamm's parents, Nagg and Nell, whose paralysis (or at any rate incapacity for motion) is indicated by the two ashbins they live in. This dwelling is, among other things, the prison of a decayed marriage whose keeper Hamm appears to be— at least, Nagg and Nell take him for such, or attribute a keeper's duties to him.

They neither expect sympathy from him nor extend any themselves, and when Hamm appears to suffer a moment of discomfiture, Nagg laughs and Nell jeers. When they vanish, or submerge, Hamm simply orders their lids sealed. So much for family values.

In Chekhov, the characters appeal to our sympathy by their suffering. Beckett simply assumes suffering as the norm of life, and any display of it becomes fair game for a snicker— as Nell puts it, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness." And Beckett is very funny, even as he breaks our hearts.

Greer's voice

In fact, the thing that makes Nagg laugh is Hamm's remark that a heart is dripping in his head. It's a gruesome and rather Poe-ish thought, but also a quite ludicrous one. Beckett was the man with the heart in his head, for whom suffering was the ground of existence and endurance the only response: as Hamm says in his first speech and repeats in his last, "Me to play."

As Hamm, Scott Greer's performance built slowly but inexorably, as his role must. With his eyes closed to us and his mobility limited to gestures, Hamm has, essentially, only his voice, and Greer makes it an instrument of impressive register and expression.

James ljames does well by the physicality of his part, but misses the darker currents in Clov, while Dan Kern and Nancy Boykin, seasoned and capable performers, were a little too likable as Nagg and Nell for my taste— presumably a directorial choice.

The EgoPo production of Endgame a few seasons back stressed the play's absurdist elements, and giving it a more human touch is certainly a valid alternative, for it is a great cry. Just don't mistake Beckett's compassion for sentiment. He'll wring your heart, but only if it, too, is firmly in your head.♦


To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
To read another review by Becca Kaplan, click here.