By: Samuel L. Leiter

February 6, 2023: Sixty years ago, when I was in grad school at the University of Hawaii, I played Clov in an MFA directing thesis production of Endgame,Samuel Beckett’s then rather fresh absurdist comedy-drama, begun in 1952 and finalized, after multiple drafts, in 1956. Endgame, which Beckett considered his favorite dramatic creation, was originally written in French as Fin de partie, and premiered as such in London in 1957;afterward the playwright translated it into English, publishing it in 1958. 

I can’t say I understood this elusive play at 23 any better than I do now, nor can I vouch for how well the young director understood it, but I remember that the Honolulu audience howled with laughter, almost as if it might have been titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Beckett. 

So uproarious was their response, I had to fight like the devil not to break up on stage myself, although I wasn’t sure what was so damned funny. Just before seeing the play’s current revival at the Irish Rep, a director friend told me that a college production he staged in the metropolitan area years ago was absolutely hilarious, suggesting that my own experience was by no means unique. The Irish Rep revival has one of America’s most artistically and intellectually gifted comic actors, Bill Irwin, playing Clov, so I looked forward to this version being the funniest one yet. Reader: it was not.

There are laughs, of course; however, they’re few and far between, even the loudest ones being polite rather than raucous, while the overall atmosphere is more frequently darkly solemn. Director Ciarán O’Reilly’s nearly 90-minute, intermissionless production eschews a radical approach (like one that set the play in a child’s play pen, or another that imagined it in a boxing ring); instead, it closely follows Beckett’s famously detailed instructions, seemingly to the letter. 

Still, despite being expertly acted by a first-rate cast, it slogs along in a miasma of often elusive Beckettian rhetoric, generously sprinkled with lightly comical repartee. One can generally follow without strain the give and take of the play’s power dynamics and ambiguous commentary on attitudes relative to themes of life and death, but the lack of dramatic tension is made only more palpable by the comedic dullness. The effect is something like having a fine French dinner served without the sauce. 

Set designer Charlie Corcoran hews closely to Beckett’s requirements, setting the action in a small, dingy room, near the sea, with two tiny windows high up on a brick wall. Those windows look out on a gray wasteland where the sun never shines. A door at our right opens into the kitchen. Michael Gottlieb’s shadowy lighting and Orla Long’s distressed costuming contribute strongly to the gloomy aura, as does M. Florian Staab’s haunting sound score. Given the Cold War period when the play was created, a popular interpretation holds that we’re in a post-apocalyptic bomb shelter. Others see it as the inside of a skull. Biblical allusions in the text also hint that the situation depicts the aftermath of a Noah-like flood.

Two ashcans sit close to one another at stage right, the abodes of an aged couple, Nagg (Joe Grifasi) and Nell (Patrice Johnson Chevannes), parents of Hamm (John Douglas Thompson), whose suffering—they lost their “shanks” in a crash when traveling to Ardennes—is a source of comic byplay. “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that,” reports Nell in a crucial line. 

Hamm, a dying blind man in dark glasses and ratty bathrobe, is first seen sleeping, covered in a sheet with a soiled rag over his face, a bloody stain over each eye as if placed there after his eyes were plucked. He even calls the rag “old stauncher,” suggesting such an original purpose; on the other hand, he later refers to his eyes as still being there, having turned white. Hamm controls his dreary domain from a leather armchair set on a wheeled platform moved about by his stiff-legged, clownish servant, Clov, unable to sit. 

Apparently independent, yet resentful of the power Hamm wields over him, Clov relates to Hamm in a way that has been compared to the Fool and King Lear. (Endgame is, in fact, replete with Shakespearean echoes.) Beckett himself once implied that the dynamic between Clov and Hamm reflected his relationship with his wife, Suzanne, at a time when each found it impossible either to live with or without the other.

When ordered to look out through the windows, Clov must move around a wooden ladder, climb it in his herky-jerky manner, using his hand to fling one leg over the top, and then repeat the robotic process on his way down. Much use is also made of assorted other props, like a telescope, an alarm clock, a stuffed toy dog, and a gaff. As represented here the latter is a long wooden staff to which is attached a large metal hook. Is it a joke on the old vaudevillian hook, meant to imply the imminence of one’s being yanked from this existence at any moment? This would be in concert with the play’s self-referential awareness that it’s a theatrical construct, and that its characters are actors.

The moves and countermoves between Clov and Hamm are analogous to a game of chess, from which the play draws its title. Moving from its opening at daybreak to the day’s endgame for those still on the board (Nell and Nagg having expired), the play explores the power relationship between Hamm and Clov via the familiar rituals of their existence, much like those of Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. Hamm, desperate to fend off his demise, makes a series of what Beckett considered “useless moves.” This existence appears to have a long past but a shaky future as the necessities of survival, including painkillers, are on the brink of disappearing. 

Endgame’s language and behavior are replete with symbolic overtones, frequently biblical ones, which have made the play a popular specimen for literary dissection. Audiences need not delve into these mysteries to enjoy the play, so long as it is well acted, which the present rendition certainly is. John Douglas Thompson, one of our leading classical actors, is extremely expressive as Hamm, even though confined to his chair throughout, his eyes usually covered by dark glasses. Mr. Irwin brings both his verbal intelligence and mastery of eccentric movement to Clov’s bizarre presence, and both Mr. Grifasi and Ms. Chevannes make their pop-up appearances count whenever they appear. 

But none of this compensates for the play’s comic potential failing to fully ignite. Endgame’s cautionary view of existence remains powerful, of course, but if its full impact is to be felt it’s essential that we be able to howl—not titter—with laughter at the same time as we contemplate the frightening cavern waiting to swallow us up. If you were lucky enough to see the memorable pairing of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot several years ago, you may sense the indescribable essence of what’s missing here. The kind of histrionic excellence on view in this Endgame can sustain one’s interest only to a certain point. When that point is reached, you may be only too happy for checkmate to arrive.

Endgame ***1/2
Irish Repertory Theatre
Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd Street, NYCO’
Through March 12, 2023
Photography: Carol Rosegg