In The End, The Tension Isn't Enough
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday December 11, 1989
ENDGAME: the decisive, closing strategy in a game of chess. In Beckett's play the game is life. Blind, immobile Hamm (Bernard McQuade), his servant-keeper Clov (James Manser) and his legless parents, Nell (Jo Anne Marcinek)and Nagg (Brendan O'Connell), are all the pieces left on the board. Beyond the room where these four exist the "universe stinks of corpses".
But does Beckett intend a statement of ultimate nihilism; of a civilisation destroyed? Or has he written a morality play about the death of a wealthy, selfish old man? Is Endgame a metaphor for the destruction of a single personality? Or is it autobiographical - with Hamm representing James Joyce and Clov his bemused, inarticulate disciple, Samuel Beckett?
These are only some of the implications of the text. But the challenge to a director is not one of specific, defining interpretation. Rather, it is to allow the plays cacophony of implication and inference to be revealed. On this level, Pavel Herzog succeeds.
Performance style is non-naturalistic and, at the same time, approaches emotional truth; speech patterns are intelligently orchestrated. This company's achievement is to deliver Beckett's fine, challenging text, untrammelled by tricksy imposition. The players also effectively juxtapose Hamm's avaricious, petulant power and the resigned, querulous impotence of Nell and Nagg - frail grotesques incarcerated in their rubbish bins.
Where they are less successful is in establishing an essential dramatic tension. No matter how Endgame is interpreted, in terms of dramatic action its crux must be the terrible pressure of wills between the tyrant- master, Hamm, and his subversive slave, Clov. But this production never quite generates the claustrophobia of the struggle.
© 1989 Sydney Morning Herald