[NEohioPAL] Review of CMA's "Endgame" at the Cleveland Play House

[Bob Abelman]

CMA's 'Endgame' offers absurdist check and mate

 

Bob Abelman

 

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,

The Morning Journal, Geauga Times Courier

Member, American Theatre Critics Association 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald 5/27/11

 
Samuel Beckett's Endgame, currently a Cleveland Museum of Art production performed at the Cleveland Play House, is about nothingness.
 
This is not to be confused with the nothing at the center of TV's sitcom Seinfeld.  The nothingness in Beckett's 90 minute, one act work pertains to the meaningless of existence or, rather, Man's inability to find real meaning in his existence.  True to Theatre of the Absurd and the existentialism that inspired it, Beckett paints a portrait of absolute desolation, isolation and boredom-nothingness.  

 

Written during the nuclear-era cold war, Endgame takes place during the final hours of the final days of earth, which has been decimated beyond recognition for reasons unknown by forces unrecognized.  As the title suggests, the fleeting enterprise of existence has finally come to its fruition.  

 

Game.  Set.  Match.   Who wins?  Nobody.  What do we have to show for it? Nothing.

 

The play introduces us to the last stronghold of the living-a decaying fortress whose four inhabitants have been stripped of any semblance of rationality or decency.  These holdouts of humanity consist of a tyrannical blind man named Hamm who cannot stand, his shuffling servant Clov who cannot sit, and the tyrant's elderly parents who are kept in separate trashcans. "Every man," Hamm suggests, "his speciality."  

 

The futility of their lives, and ours, is best depicted in a series of maddening and elliptical conversations between Hamm and Clov.  For example:  Hamm: "Why do you stay with me?"  Clov: "Why do you keep me?"  Hamm: "There's no one else."  Clov: "There's nowhere else."

And later: Clov: "So, you all want me to leave you."  Hamm: "Naturally."  Clov: "Then I'll leave you."  Hamm: "You can't leave us." Clov: "Then I won't leave you."

Clearly, this play is no walk in the park.  Beckett himself noted that this work is difficult and that it is useless to try to find meaning or explanation anywhere in the script.

 

This is sound advice worth taking.  In fact, being freed from finding logic where there is none and released from the burden of piecing together prose in search of a plot that does not exist, we have the luxury of simply sitting back to appreciate this superb, absurd CMA production.

 

Under Massoud Saidpour's purposeful direction and inside Mark Kobak's grey, foreboding doomsday set design and Michael Boll's austere lighting, this cast of experienced professionals does justice to Beckett's play. In fact, they are brilliant.

 

While Beckett's writing is convoluted and often contrary, there is a subtle rhythm required in its delivery.  Finely honed comic timing is also necessary in order to extract the humor so well concealed by all that is morose and elusive about this play.

 

George Roth as Hamm has what Zero Mostel and, later, Robin Williams brought to their respective productions of Beckett's Waiting for Godot.  He has an immense musicality that makes Beckett's dialogue sound lyrical and comic timing that mines the script for each and every nugget.   Roth's performance is rich and riveting, and his Hamm drives the insanity that drives this play.    

 

Terence Cranendock, as Clov, is equally spellbinding.  As his character drags himself about the stage doing Hamm's bidding, Cranendock's acting choices are carefully orchestrated affairs.  Every decision by Clov seems to be laden with indecision; every action is a physically strenuous and emotionally exhausting enterprise.  Cranendock is wonderful to watch and his exchanges with Roth make for some truly great theater moments.

 

Dorothy Silver and Mark Seven play Hamm's canned parents.  Their expressive faces popping out from beneath the lids of their trashcans create grotesque death-masks that add much to the absurdity of this play.   And, like Roth and Cranendock, their delivery and comic timing are impeccable.

 

Saidpour chose to have this play performed behind a transparent scrim.  Rustic black and white opening and closing credits are projected, which is odd until one reads the program's Director's Notes about how the physical comedy in this play can be seen as "Chaplinesque." If the scrim is an attempt to push this perception of the play's filmic qualities, it misses its mark.

 

However, the scrim also acts like the gauze cheesecloth film directors of yore placed over the camera lens to wash out the wrinkles of their aging actresses.  It gives a misty, other-worldly glow to the performers, which adds an interesting quality to this production. 

 

Theatre of the Absurd can be a depressing and, in the hands of lesser talents, exhausting experience.  This CMA production of Endgame is check and mate by comparison.  This is Beckett at its best.

 

Endgame continues through June 11 in The Cleveland Play House's Brooks Theatre.  For tickets, which are $29, call 216-421-7350 or visit www.clevelandart.org.
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