Endgame at Sydney Theatre Company
Posted by Sas Lyon
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”
Nell
Sydney Theatre Company presents ENDGAME by Samuel Beckett.
Hugo Weaving returns to Sydney Theatre Company in Samuel Beckett’s modern masterpiece, which takes the end of the world so seriously it makes us laugh.
Hamm is a blind tyrant, unable to stand. Clov is his son, unable to sit. Hamm’s parents, Nell and Nagg, are living in bins.
Sheltering in an underground room, Hamm orders Clov about. Clov looks out the window for signs of life, but all seems lost and there is no one there. Inside, the characters pass the time, brutally toying with each other in the way only family can. These four people, perhaps the last, are playing out the game of life to its inevitable end.
What has happened outside? Will Clov leave Hamm to die?
In the mix of dark comedic repartee and distilled insight, Beckett’s singular voice rings clear – absurdity in the face of meaninglessness, sorrow in the face of futility, humour in the face of mortality
With our acclaimed production of Waiting for Godot in 2013, Hugo Weaving and Andrew Upton began a conversation with the work of Samuel Beckett. With Endgame, they pick up where they left off.
The two plays are, in many respects, companion pieces – Endgame, completed in 1956, acts as a subterranean coda to Godot. Both were informed by the wholesale destruction of the Second World War and the sense of impending yet intangible doom promised by the nuclear age.
If Godot redefined the possibilities of theatre, Endgame cemented Beckett’s place as the foremost playwright of his era.
“Like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh any more.”
Duration: 1hr 20min (no interval)
