How it’s New York: Irish Repertory Theatre is one of New York’s finest gems of an Off-
Broadway theatre.
How it’s Irish: Samuel Beckett was Irish, though he spent much of his life in French and wrote in French.
As soon as Clov (Bill Irwin) enters Irish Repertory Theatre’s stage, at the beginning of Endgame, and moves his ladder to look at things on the wall, the audience is with him. We don’t know where we are, who he is, what he’s looking for: but somehow it’s funny. He’s a Chaplin-esque, little tramp type of guy. We’re right there.
As directed by Ciarán O’Reilly at Irish Rep, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, penned in 1957, has the knowing laughs in place, as much as or more than the existential revelations as the four characters, blind Hamm (John Douglas Thompson), shambling Clov, and Hamm’s parents Nagg (Joe Grifasi) and Nell (Patrice Johnson Chevannes) who live in old metal garbage cans, talk about the life they are not quite living, the world that is not what it was.
If you’ve seen any Beckett, perhaps Waiting for Godot, you may have some sense of what’s to come: we’re in an unnamed place, with characters in odd circumstances. If you wait for specifics you’ll wait in vain, but it helps to know that the world has ended and these are the last people left. (Endgame. Get it?)
If you think of the play more as a poem, or a painting come to life, with jokes, you’ll enjoy it more. The audience of the Livestream I attended clearly did: every fast retort got a belly laugh. The League of Live Stream Theater provided live coverage for the last four days of the run– the show was such a huge hit it completely sold out.
As it should.
Just because Beckett writes “pause” a lot, and his plays all circle around the idea of death, doesn’t mean he is not funny.
For example:
HAMM:Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?
NAGG:I didn’t know.
HAMM:What? What didn’t you know?
NAGG:That it’d be you.
You can almost hear a rim shot.
Though written in French, the deadpan style of the humor feels Irish, and O’Reilly gets tight and subtle performances from his cast. Though there are four characters, much of the play is a duet between Clov and Hamm, and the lion-in-chains that is John Douglas Thompson’s Clov interaction with the wise fool that is Bill Irwin’s hapless Hamm only makes the sadness and fear under the humor sharper.
Despite the desolate environment– set design to perfection by Charlie Corcoran, properties by Deirdre Brennan (a stuffed toy dog does a lot of work)– and the dim lighting by Michael Gottlieb, there’s a very vitality to the performances that keeps the play feeling bright. Dusty, disheveled costumes by Orla Long capture the mood of grim whimsy perfectly.
Don’t misunderstand: this is not a joyful play. This is a play that ends with Clov, a blind man telling a story, a story about the end of the world and how it feels:
You CRIED for night; it comes—
(Pause. He corrects himself.)
It FALLS: now cry in darkness.
(He repeats, chanting.)
You cried for night; it falls: now cry in darkness.
(Pause.)
Nicely put, that.
(Pause.å
And now?
(Pause.)
Moments for nothing, now as always, time was never and time is over, reckoning closed and story ended.
And the final tableau, like that of Waiting for Godot, is of an acceptance that nothing changes. Is it despair? Or is it peace?
The performances are uniformly excellent, and often startling. Despite being chair-bound and blind, John Douglas Thompson’s Hamm powerfully bullies the others on stage, with shouts, roars and a sinister “good” as he weaves his tale.
Irwin as always captures Beckett’s physical humor perfectly, and his symbiosis with Clov as a caretaker and also a shuffling servant feels strange byt apt.
Grifasi’s Nagg offers a lovable, even polite bewilderment that adds levity to everything, while his wife Nell, as played by Johnson Chevanne, has a ferocious bite. If only she could get out!
It’s startling and enlightening to see such bold interpretations of Beckett’s characters: neither JUST making jokes, nor quietly intoning poetry, they live and breathe before us in an earth we don’t quite recognize, thanks to O’Reilly’s clean, clear direction.
Thanks to the League of Live Stream Theater for making my viewing of the show possible. The final livestream is on Sunday, April 16, at 3 p.m.
