14/08/26

Pleasance at EICC (Lomond Theatre), Edinburgh

Which adjective best describes Samuel Beckett’s Endgame? Depressing? Dystopian? Dingy? Dark? Take your pick. And yet this is also a funny play, full of clowning, jokes and silly absurdities. Who better to illuminate the weirdness than the wonderful Flabbergast Theatre?

We’ve been fans of Flabbergast ever since we stumbled across Tatterdamelion at 2016’s Fringe; in the intervening years, we’ve been wowed by The Swell Mob, The Tragedy of Macbeth and Paper Swans. We’re excited to see what they do with “the play that Beckett considered bleaker than Godot“.

Henry Maynard is not only Flabbergast’s founder and the director of Endgame, he’s also Hamm, the blind and dying man at the centre of this piece. Hamm is angry with life, railing against his failing body and the terrible state of the world. The view from his window, he is told, is desolate, post-apocalyptic. Something dreadful has happened out there – and it’s not much better inside his home. Hamm is stuck in his chair, unable to move, utterly reliant on the hapless Clov (Simon Gleave), who’s been with Hamm since he was a boy. Part servant, part surrogate son, Clov is cowed by Hamm, incapable of standing up to him.

The play’s most transparent metaphor is Hamm’s parents’ accommodation. Old and useless, Nagg (Derek Ellwood) and Nell (Complicité’s Annabel Arden) have been discarded like rubbish: they live in a pair of dustbins outside their son’s house, popping up occasionally to beg for food. The price for a hard biscuit is high: they have to listen to Hamm’s endless shouting about how they neglected him when he was young. His accusations are born out by Nagg’s cruel replies but their helplessness makes us sympathise with the aged couple.

Mostly, though, our hearts go out to Clov. He’s the only one who’s able to move, albeit with difficulty, and so he’s stuck caring for these dreadful people, none of whom has a kind word for him. Gleave’s expert clowning gives the play its physical dynamism, preventing it from seeming static, despite the fixed positions of the other three characters.

Skilfully conceived, this production has a clarity that illuminates Beckett’s dream-like, complex play, making it more accessible than any other version I have seen. Just as in life, death looms large – but there are plenty of laughs along the way.

5 stars

Susan Singfield