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ENDGAME by Samuel Beckett. Directed and designed by
Nicholas Linfield. At the Boston Arts Group.
Endgame is, of course, about the end -- the play
distills Beckett's bleak vision of a moribund world in which
humanity, drained of ambition and denied fulfillment, still
struggles against the silence. But the play is also a game in
which that barren reality is likened to the theatrical process
-- what is a better mirror of nature, from Beckett's point of
view, than a bare stage where nothing happens? It is this
self-referential aspect that dominates the Boston Arts Group's
oddly (though not inappropriately) mechanical production.
While detailing Clov and Hamm's dull, daily routine, Endgame
creates itself as it goes along, incessantly challenging its
existence as theater. "We're getting on," says Hamm;
later, "We're not beginning to mean something, are
we?; still later, like a Beckettian memo, "Me to play:
We're almost finished." Clov asks what's to keep him
there; Hamm replies, "The dialogue." And the
dialogue is all; there isn't even the pretense of action.
After all, what can any character actually do onstage? Stand,
sit. Talk, listen. Enter, exit. Climb stepladder, play with
toy dog. Anything else would be pushing it. Faking it. By
limiting his action to that which is physically doable in the
theater, Beckett makes of his stage world a microcosm for his
metaphysical one; in each, man struggles, but the struggle is
pointless.
There is much more to Endgame -- the interdependence of
Clov and Hamm, Hamm's love and resentment of his parents, Nagg
and Nell, dying in their ashbins -- and this is by no means
ignored in the BAG production. Director Nicholas Linfield,
however, ever so slightly stresses the play's
self-consciousness. And there are some stylized tricks (Clov's
jerky robot-like trot, several striking frozen tableaux) that
makes this an Endgame more for the head than for the
heart, which is unusual and not uninteresting. Linfield
himself plays Hamm, which proves a mistake. His performance
lacks both shape and feeling; it is the production's soft
center. The other actors, however, are fine -- Roger Curtis as
Clov, David Watson as Nagg, and (especially) Karen Ross as
Nell.
Boston Phoenix, June 1978
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