Review: Endgame

Joseph Ziegler (photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann)

The End is Near.
by Shannon Christy
@schristy79

According to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away.” There’s not much left to take away from Soulpepper’s production of Beckett’s work Endgame and that’s why Director Daniel Brooks’s work is so powerful; he embraced Beckett’s austerity and had a terrific cast to work with. 

Mr. Brooks does such an excellent job at creating the sensation of dust, decay, pettiness, and general frustration that you end up dusting yourself off after the performance. The set is a grey dusty cube with two basement windows on opposite sides, two trashcans placed beside each other on one side of the room, and an old wheelchair occupied by Hamm (Joseph Ziegler), an immobile tyrant. Hamm’s domain consists of three creatures that are fed up with each other and exhausted from life. Costume designer, Victoria Wallace, continues the dreariness by covering them in ragged monotone colored clothes. Yet these dreary clothed creatures set in their grey cube somehow provide us with humor.

he does see a group of people who are enthralled by this work

Humour flows through this play like a slow dying light flowing through an abandoned building.  The cheap laughs come from the exchanges between the immobile tyrant, and his disdainful drone, Clov (Diego Matamoros) to do this meaningless thing, pick up this object, answer this question, grease this wheel etc…  Or when Clov asks Hamm if he still needs the catheter and Hamm responds that it is too late; he has simply added his waste to an already disgusting situation. 

Hamm’s parents who are placed in two trashcans on one side of the dusty grey cube deliver the most powerful performances. Hamm’s Mother, Nell (Maria Vacratsis), manages to somehow bring us back to a better time while never telling us anything about where it was or what it is, other than “yesterday”.

Hamm’s father, Nagg (Eric Peterson) is an irascible old man who only wants pap, a sugar plum, and a little cuddle from his wife. Nagg displays contempt, joy, hunger, disappointment, and fury with an amazing repertoire of Mr. Peterson’s facial contortions considering that his entire part is presented from a trashcan.  

The biggest joke is on the audience itself. For the truth, as the program's Director’s note points out, is that these hapless fools, with their vanities, petty grievances are a reflection of us. This is clear when Clov, while checking to see if his telescope works, points it towards the audience and declares “That he sees a multitude in transports of joy!” Joy may not be the exact word but he does see a group of people who are enthralled by this work.

Soulpepper has successfully revived Samuel Beckett’s Endgame while providing some laughs and helping their audience realize that no matter how bad our own endgame may be it could never be as dismal as the ones in that grey cube. 

Endgame plays in rep.