Review: Endgame by Palindrome Theatre (2010-2013)
by Michael Meigs
Palindrome Theatre takes you right out to the edge of the abyss with Samuel Beckett's Endgame: ninety minutes at the end of the world with four arresting characters who wrap up existence and the fitful light of human life.
Endgame is grim, yes, but it's blazingly comic at times, as well. In the shadows of this basement room the ancient Nell shares a memory with her foolish senescent husband Nagg. "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. But . . . . Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more."
Those who believe in theatre, theatre as a gateway to meaning and theatre as a means of capturing the human dilemma, will need to see this piece. The subtlety and complexity of the text and the delivery will move them deeply.
Martin Esslin made a reputation and labeled much of twentieth century drama with his 1962 book The Theatre of the Absurd. He used Beckett's 1949 two-act play Waiting for Godot as a primary example for his reflections. He and other critics discussed playwrights' embrace of myth, existential pessimism, contradiction and the failure of conventional language -- attributable in some degree to the catastrophes of World War II and to the intuited end of civilization. Endgame, first performed in 1957, reflects many of these qualities.
A personal parenthesis: I attended an accomplished amateur performance of Waiting for Godot when I was about 17. The experience of that play shook my comfortable world and opened an entirely new vista. Yes, we faced absurdity and uncertainty. The mysterious Godot was absent - - but what a meditation upon ourselves and upon our great expectations!
Seeing Palindrome's Endgame has put a bookend upon the other end of the shelf. Retired, now an orphan, vigorous but apprehensive about the future for all of us, I found deep humanity in Beckett's sardonic fable.
The piece takes place in a single claustrophobic basement room with a shrouded wheelchair and two large trashcans. Narrow windows high in the wall offer the only views to the exterior. We meet Clov, a dim lackey whose duties are to attend the blind and resentful Ham, revealed as the occupant of the wheelchair. The trashcans when eventually opened reveal their occupants, Nagg and Nell, foolish and feeble, perhaps the parents of the invalid Ham.
The action of this piece is verbal -- wrangling, remembering and bitter banter. Ham is immobile and blind but dominates the others by some unknown authority and by force of personality. Supplies have run out; nothing but ashes and the gray sea are visible beyond the windows; all are waiting for a surcease of the boredom, the suffering and the deceptive temptations of their existence.
Stories, memories and imagined scenarios have become the web of their existence. The ancient parents recall their courtship on Lake Como; Nagg tells a long, stupid joke. Ham bribes the ancient Nagg into listening as he crafts a narrative that may or may not explain the origins of his abject servant Clov. They try to pray. Clov and Ham speculate what will happen when one or the other of them dies.
At the conclusion Nell appears to have died at the bottom of her trashcan; her partner Nagg is reported to be weeping silently. Ham prepares for sleep. Clov refuses to answer Ham's call but stands regarding him silently, suitcase in hand with nowhere to go.
Palindrome, a new venture for Austin under the leadership of St. Ed's graduate Nigel O'Hearn, does Austin theatre a great service in staging this piece. Not just because it is a classic of Western drama, but because of the quality of the production. Director Kate Eminger and the fine, aware cast play this difficult materal with sensitivity, variations in rhythm and timing, and with no fear of the harshness of the text.
In this piece Gabriel Luna becomes an artist of pauses, slow dawning and double takes, establishing for us Clov's sluggishly resentful stupidity and, finally, his sinking into mute rebellion. Humiliations combine with entropy, and Clov's dead, determined regard toward his master is that of an animal pushed too far.
Nell and Nagg, in their nightcaps and ashcans, provide the chilling comedy of second childhood and beyond. They're talcum powdered to a decent dustiness that helps distract from the fact that instead of geezer and crone, they are in fact good-looking young actors. Helyn Messenger's blank consternation convinces us, however, and Maarouf Naboulsi's lip-smacking, infant-eyed portrayal of the decayed progenitor is comic, especially in his vacant attendance at Ham's story telling.
So it's not comfortable theatre. And it's not a rib-tickler, although there was one cheery audience member that evening who didn't get that message until about halfway through the piece.
Highly recommended.
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Review by webmaster at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/theatreaustin, January 21
Review by Avimaan Syam for the Austin Chronicle, January 28
Review by Bastion Carboni for austinist.com, January 28
Endgame
by Samuel Beckett
Palindrome Theatre (2010-2013)
