{"id":1016,"date":"2010-07-12T20:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T03:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2010-08-03T11:01:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-03T18:01:42","slug":"endgame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2010\/07\/endgame\/","title":{"rendered":"Endgame"},"content":{"rendered":"

Play by Samuel Beckett<\/p>\n

Directed by Eric Hill
\nWith David Chandler (Clov), Mark Corkins (Hamm), Tanya Dougherty (Nell), Randy Harrison (Nagg)<\/p>\n

Berkshire Theatre Festival<\/a>
\nStockbridge, MA<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Bulging<\/a><\/p>\n

from Mind-Boggling Mazes by Dave Phillips, Dover Publications, 1979.<\/a>\"\" <\/small><\/p>\n

Endgame<\/em> is a classic of modernist theatre, but it can be, at times, frustrating in its lack of coherent narrative and in its way of steering off the rails that ordinarily convey character and plot. As the director and cast of this fine production pointed out in their talk-back, it is more like complex modern music, out of which strange and wonderful feelings can rise up. They did for me.<\/strong><\/div>\n

I was pleased to hear that David Chandler, whom I had seen in the American Repertory Theatre’s<\/a> production of Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost<\/a><\/em> this spring, was doing Beckett in the Berkshires this summer. I drove out from Boston to see the production and was very happy that I did. <\/p>\n

I had seen Endgame<\/em> in 1984 at the American Repertory Theatre, in a production that was considered, by Beckett himself, as an interpretive transgression. The current production, at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, appears to be much less controversial and, from what I gather, sticks pretty much to Beckett’s directives. (In 2009, by the way, The American Repertory Theatre, mounted a much less controversial, stick-to-the-text, production of Endgame<\/em>). <\/p>\n

The American Repertory Theatre’s 1984 production of Endgame<\/em>, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, took so many liberties with the text, in Beckett’s view, that he insisted that either the production be shut down or that his name be taken off the program. An out of court settlement was reached hours before the production opened. As a result, Beckett’s name was taken off all advertising and his written disapproval was distributed with the program.<\/strong><\/div>\n

For those who don’t know the play, let’s just say – it is not exactly Life With Father<\/em> (Clarence Day’s humorous portrait of family life that ran for over seven years on Broadway beginning in 1939). <\/p>\n

The main character, Hamm, sits center stage throughout the one long act of the piece. He is joined at various points by his attendant, Clov, who stumbles on and off stage throughout, and by his legless parents, Nell and Nagg, who occasionally appear, and rise up, from low lying garbage cans on one side of the stage. <\/p>\n

The play opens with Clov meticulously, but laboriously, following a detailed sequence of carrying, then opening and climbing, a ladder, peering out of one window, then laughing. He then carefully repeats each gesture in setting up the ladder beneath the other window. The specificity with which Beckett describes each of these gestures is noteworthy. Chandler, as Clov, does a great job of exhibiting painstaking and compulsive precision with each of the nuanced elements of this sequence. The scene challenges one’s patience with its meticulous and repetitive details. Yet, every tiny gesture echoes in the near vacancy of the setting. It is very much like an endgame in chess in which almost all the pieces have been removed from the board, but in which every minute move is laboriously calculated, with enormous implications.<\/p>\n

It turns out that almost everything that follows threatens to be annoying in one way or another. If it is not meticulous and repetitive, then it is bizarrely incoherent and hard to follow. It goes on like this for a good long time – at least, by the standards of one act plays – to the brink of distraction. <\/p>\n

Just at the point that I felt I’d just about had it, something wonderful emerged from the mess of these oddities. <\/p>\n

Anyone who has played around successfully with the sorts of computer generated stereoscopic images that The Magic Eye <\/a>\"\" books, and their vast retinue of imitators, exhibit, knows how surprising and unexpected their effects can be. After staring at a monotonous pattern for a long time – with no apparent results – suddenly, an amazing three dimensional image can rise up out of the page in a totally prepossessing and unexpected way. <\/p>\n

\"Stereoscopic<\/a>Here’s a computer generated stereoscopic image. If you stare at it long enough, you may see an image of a cup with a little figure in it, a bit reminiscent of Nell and Nagg in Endgame<\/em>. Check out similar images at www.magiceye3ds.com<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

The same thing happened for me in this production: after a long while, a large and ambient stillness rose up from the stage. It was buoyed by the bizarre words and the odd characters and actions, as though held aloft and spinning like a plate on the end of a juggler’s wand. <\/p>\n

The acting is very good overall. Chandler’s Clov is a dutiful, but jittery, presence who carries his humor like a sidearm, always available but not always visible. He is like a cross between Caliban (from Shakespeare’s The Tempest<\/em>) and Maynard G. Krebs (the iconic beatnik from the fifties sitcom Dobie Gillis<\/em>.) It’s hard to be haunting and funny at the same time, but that is exactly what Beckett calls for and Chandler does it effectively. <\/p>\n

Mark Corkins, as Hamm, gives a compelling performance of the difficult central role, conjoining, with apparent ease, all the seemingly disparate linguistic strands the part requires. <\/p>\n

Tanya Dougherty (Nell) and Randy Harrison (Nagg), are young actors who play the roles of these ancients with compelling humor, sprightliness and conviction. From their astute performances, I would never have guessed they were as young as they were.<\/p>\n

Samuel Beckett died in 1989 at the age of 83. He was born in Ireland, but lived most of his life in Paris, and originally wrote many of the works for which he is best known, including Endgame<\/em>, in French. Endgame <\/em>was first produced in 1957.<\/strong><\/div>\n

I stayed after the show for the talk-back by the actors and the director. It was extremely interesting and useful. I really liked the self-effacing and humble way in which Hill, Chandler and Corkins bowed before the difficult majesty of the play. One of them – I believe it was Hill – likened Endgame <\/em>to a musical score. I found the allusion most helpful in understanding how I had experienced the production. It was not so much like a tale as it was like a piece of contemporary chamber music. It struck me that Endgame <\/em>is a lot like the Bartok string quartets: they bang and stammer, and sometimes grate at one’s sensibilities, but then offer the reward of a hard-to-describe sense of spacious and daunting incomprehensibility that fills the room with an intimate and quiet wonder.<\/p>\n

The talkback was such a nice enhancement to the performance that, in retrospect, it seemed an integral complement to it.<\/p>\n

When the director, Eric Hill, was asked why he picked such young actors to perform the elderly roles, he gave a straightforward and practical answer: he had done so because young actors were best suited to crouching down below stage for the duration of the show, a requirement for the roles of the garbage-can inhabiting parents. The answer was funny, sweet and true. Hill has managed, by making use of those qualities, along with a good amount of theatrical adeptness and a great cast, to create a powerful spacious moment in this vale of complexities.<\/p>\n

Seven years ago, I experienced another case of a play rising up<\/em> in this way. <\/p>\n

I went to New York in 2003 to see an amazing cast in a production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night<\/em><\/em>. It starred Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard – an astoundingly adept ensemble. I expected that with such a group of heavy hitters presenting a great work like this O’Neill epic, I would be immediately transported into theatrical heaven. It was not so. <\/p>\n

The play is long – it hovers around four hours. Despite my elevated hopes, during the first two acts I kept reacting to the endless amount of dialogue involving interpersonal badgering, undermining, and deceiving, and I thought: find yourselves a good therapist!<\/em> I was not transported at all. <\/p>\n

Then, three hours and change into it, the final act came, and whammo<\/em>. It was as though all the machinations of the first two acts were preliminaries, setups, exercises. All of a sudden, whatever those setups did lifted the whole production and its audience into mid-air. It all came together alchemically in that final act, as though space opened into a new dimension and rose up and out of the work’s sometimes monotonous details. <\/strong><\/div>\n

– BADMan<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nEndgame and Act Without Words by Samuel Beckett<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Magic Eye: A New Way of Looking at the World<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill<\/a>\"\"<\/div>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Play by Samuel Beckett Directed by Eric Hill With David Chandler (Clov), Mark Corkins (Hamm), Tanya Dougherty (Nell), Randy Harrison (Nagg) Berkshire Theatre Festival Stockbridge, MA from Mind-Boggling Mazes by Dave Phillips, Dover Publications, 1979. Endgame is a classic of modernist theatre, but it can be, at times, frustrating in its lack of coherent narrative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-plays","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":83,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1112,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions\/1112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}