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Simon McBurney as Clov and Mark Rylance as Hamm (seated).
Picture by John Minihan, photographer and friend of Beckett |
Endgame: Beckett for a beginner?
Beckett ‘virgin’ Simon McBurney’s interpretation of the modern classic struggles to portray its nuances, writes John Calder
THE fourth production of Endgame in London in a decade proves that Beckett’s most difficult play to bring off to an average audience is now an established modern classic. And it was good to see so many young people in attendance, who are far from facing the imminent death and possible end of the world that the work is about.
It deserves three out of five, but it only just gets the point over, and not only does the programme give no hint of the biblical underpinning of a masterpiece often compared to King Lear, but the director, Simon McBurney, who also plays Clov, avoids humour and artificial playfulness in which the work abounds, which must be conveyed largely through body language and intonation.
A Beckett virgin, who apparently was given some help in understanding the piece by Tony Mohr, a Beckett veteran, he nevertheless plays the part with a sullen woodenness that misses every comic opportunity to lighten a play that is based on Noah’s great flood.
Hamm (in the Bible Noah’s son) overplays the part with shouting and screams that go against the author’s intention to show a man in terror of his last moments summoning up all his reserves of courage to meet his end with dignity.
The other major loss is Beckett’s great poetic language, the cadences and memorable lines, one of which, Clov’s “I saw the lights of the world extinguished, though I never saw them lit”, in his final great speech, was omitted on the night I went. The other two characters, Hamm’s aged parents, Nagg and Nell, immured in dustbins on sand because they once lost their legs in a bicycle accident, played by Tom Hickey and Miriam Margolyes, give excellent performances, both funny and poignant.
Tragedy works best when mingled with comedy, as Shakespeare proved so well, and the rare laughter in the audience proved the lack of humour in the main performances.
Also, the many historical references, such as Hamm’s story of the father coming to him to beg food for his child – an obvious reference to the great Irish famine – went for nothing, because the director had not grasped its significance.
That Beckett is the greatest playwright of the 20th century, as well as one of the very greatest novelists and a very significant poet, is hardly in doubt any more. It is the interweaving of a highly personal and Schopenhauerian view of the purpose of existence, full of references to the mythology, history and literature of the past, with an original style that had moved away from Joyce to a spare use of selected words with its roots in French philosophical writing that makes Beckett so unique.
He makes us realise the full horror of a world where God, if there is one, is unaware or uncaring of our existence.
McBurney seems to have grasped some of this, but he has nevertheless reduced a great and rather frightening drama to a sour master-servant relationship that is only the surface.
But Endgame always makes its main point, that destiny can only be met with courage and endurance. The play could have been better cast, but it still works.
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