Endgame
Samuel Beckett · 1957
Hamm sits blind in a chair while his servant Clov shuffles around a bare room. Two old people live in garbage cans. The world outside may be dead. Beckett considered it his best play, more disciplined than Godot. It's theater reduced to a chess endgame: few pieces left, no winning moves, the game continuing anyway.
The case against
Godot at least had vaudeville warmth between the waiting; this is the same void with the jokes filed down. Nothing happens, on purpose, and the purpose does not make eighty minutes pass faster. Beckett policed productions so strictly the play permits no interpretive air. On the page it is a score without its music: exact, gray, unforgiving.
Drama · the Pro canon
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