"It is his remarkable ability to mix beauty, imagination, vitality and wry humor that transforms [Samuel] Beckett from a mere dispenser of meaningless gloom into a dramatic poet.” (Richard Watts, Jr., New York Post)

I am so glad I found the quotation above because I was stumbling through an attempt to say something similar, and failing. My observation was based on the fact that, when I got to my car and realized how long the BTF performance of Endgame had run (nearly two hours) I was surprised. While there where times when I had been bored and longing for the end to come – which is exactly what Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) wanted me to feel – I had no concept of 105 minutes passing.

For all the absurdity of Beckett’s work, there is beauty too, and suspense as we piece together bits of the characters lives and relationships from the fragments we are given. And Beckett makes us care about these people, unusual as they are.
E ndgame is a long one-act play written in 1957. An Irishman, Beckett spent most of his adult life in France and wrote in french, although he then did his own English translations. Set in a single, dreary room with two windows and one door, the play centers on the blind, egocentric, wheelchair-bound Hamm (Mark Corkins), his servant Clov (David Chandler) who, though lame, cannot sit, and his legless parents Nagg (Randy Harrison) and Nell (Tanya Dougherty) who he keeps in trash cans.

In other words, there is only character, Clov, able to move voluntarily. Nagg and Nell never leave their cans, and Hamm can only move about if Clov pushes him. Beckett is making a statement about the ruts in life in which we all tend to immobilize ourselves. Even Clov cannot sit and seems unable to leave, although he and Hamm discuss the possibility frequently.

Hamm: We’re not beginning to…to…mean something?

Clov: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (brief laugh.) That’s a good one!

Hamm: I wonder. (Pause.) Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn’t he be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough.

Samuel Beckett, Endgame
A great many people spend way too much time trying to make Beckett mean something. I am not disputing that he had intention in his writing and that that intention didn’t impart multiple meanings, but it is a waste of our time trying to come up with a definitive meaning for Endgame or any of his other writings. The play is about the paradox of death, but beyond that I am not willing to venture further.

I am happy to report that there was a full house in the Unicorn for the performance of Endgame I attended, and only two people walked out. The BTF styles its season as “theatre that matters” and while I can just see Beckett getting all up in arms at the idea that anything, especially the artifice that is theatre, matters, there is the perception that “serious” theatre of the type the BTF is staging this summer – Beckett, Albee, Shakespeare – is more “important” than comedies and musicals. Not that they aren’t staging those too, but there is a certain mindset that embraces the idea that the harder plays are to understand, the more “serious” and “important” they must be. This is obviously an Emperor’s-New-Clothes-Style delusion, but people embrace it nonetheless, enough to sell-out a beautifully performed and directed production of a play in which, literally, nothing happens. The people who claim nothing happens in Waiting for Godot obviously haven’t seen or read Endgame.

Director Eric Hill has a good feel for this elusive type of theatre, and he has assembled a cast who obviously believe deeply in what they do. Corkins brings immense bombast to the shallow and aptly named Hamm, while narrow, sallow Chandler plays the endlessly nagged Clov with a seething underpinning of rage.

Hill deliberately cast young actors as Nagg and Nell, who are among the sweetest of Beckett’s pairings. These two, whether they are dead or alive, are deeply in love. They care about and for each other, even though they can barely reach between their cans to touch each other. Hill has Chandler get down on his hands and knees and up-end himself deep into the cans to talk to Nagg and Nell, which is a good comic effect. At one point, when he is forcing a recalcitrant Nagg back into his dustbin, Hill has Harrison thrust bony white hands, fingers splayed, up into the air, grasping at life as he is stuffed back down into the grave.

Beckett insisted that his stage directions be followed to the letter, and while he doesn’t demand full white face for Nagg and Nell, he does say that they are “very white” and Hill and costume designer Charles Schoonmaker have made them very, very white indeed. If the irises of their eyes and the dark caverns of their mouths could have been whitened I am sure they would have done that too. As it is they are chalk white apparitions, literal ghosts rising from the earth.

Harrison is an extremely popular actor, and casting him in an obscure and difficult play is one of the best ways to ensure that crowds turn out. But in numerous interviews Harrison states his love for Beckett and the Berkshires, and the fact that he returns to the BTF summer after summer to assume minor roles proves his dedication to the work rather than the limelight. Here he is fascinating to watch, creating a full characterization with his face and hands, acting and reacting both to what is going on onstage and what is running through Nagg’s mind. Playing with a constant tremor of extreme old age, he is never still.

In the much smaller role of Nell, Dougherty is sweet, although her performance is nowhere near as complete and nuanced as the gentlemen’s.

Endgame has several laughs and many thought provoking lines. When I wrote earlier that I was bored and longed for the play to end, I was well aware that that was exactly the point Beckett was making about life. It is tedious, repetitive, and seemingly endless – until one day it just suddenly ceases. And then, what? If we know no more once our brains die isn’t the life we experience truly endless…and monotonous…just like this play? We long for life to be over because we are in pain or in poverty or hungry or sick or lonely or just bored, but since there is only one alternative we go on until we no longer exist.

Set designer Gary M. English, lighting designer Dan Kotlowitz and Schoonmaker have teamed up to create a very painterly look for this play. When the lights came up on Chandler contemplating the windows while Corkins slept in his wheelchair, covered in a sheet, I thought how still and beautiful the blues and greens of the walls, meant no doubt to represent mildew, were. During Clov’s business, before the dialogue began, I enjoyed just looking.

One small quibble: The program for this production is a mere half sheet of paper that lists the actors and creative team. The rest of the space is taken up with housekeeping details (please turn off your cell phone, recording devices are prohibited, etc) and an ad. There is NO information about Beckett or Endgame and in this case some information of that nature would help audiences enjoy the show. Not everyone has an M.F.A. As a member of the press I get a Xeroxed copy of a four-page publication titled, rather stiffly, Subscriber Enrichment Packet. That is very informative and helpful and while I appreciate that it is a subscriber perk – and I certainly encourage everyone to support their favorite theatres in any way they can – in this particular case at least some of that information should have been made available to the unwashed masses as well.

Endgame is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, and you shouldn’t feel you have to go and see it because it is “serious” or “important” or “good for you.” Go if you love Beckett. Go if you want to see great acting. Go for the experience. Its not that long, and its quite interesting.

Endgame runs through July 24 at the Unicorn Theatre, located on Route 7 north of Stockbridge, MA on the campus of the Berkshire Theatre Festival. The show runs 105 minutes with no intermission and is not suitable for children.
For information and tickets call the box office at 413-298-5576 or go on line to www.berkshiretheatre.org.