Endgame

Aaron Monaghan and Rory Nolan in Endgame. Image by Ros Kavanagh

****

Pan Pan in 2019. The Gate Theatre in 2022. Now it's Druid Theatre’s turn. Begging the question, do we really need another production of Endgame? Or, rather, are we about due one? Samuel Beckett’s 1957 timeless classic a theatrical river you never step into twice. Each new encounter a freshly minted experience offering oft forgotten insights. Its existential inquiry into the absurd nature of existence forever escaping the frames trying to bind it. Even those of the ever excellent Druid. Who, under Garry Hynes’s brilliant direction, are unafraid to make strong, defining choices. Choices as brave and bold as they are likely to be divisive.

Aaron Monaghan and Marie Mullen in Endgame. Image by Ros Kavanagh

Take Aaron Monaghan’s cartoonish Clov. Whose ragged mechanical movements suggest a wind up toy, or puppet, emphasising his inability to sit down and his servant status. Reinforced by Francis O’Connor’s dusty butler’s tailcoat offset by tracksuit bottoms. Clov, a programmed Pavlovian executing repeated patterns, opens the curtains, checks the desolate landscape, and jumps with frustration at his master’s whistle like an obedient dog. Rory Nolan’s Hamm, looking and sounding like a bombastic Monty Woolley, planted centre stage in the middle of their universe. Filling up his reclining wheelchair from where he can neither see nor stand. His ghostly parents, Nell and Nagg, a charismatic Marie Mullen and Bosco Hogan respectively, living out their final days in adjoining dustbins adjacent to the blind, chair bound demi-god. Popping up like creatures from Sesame Street for biscuits, conversations, reconnection, or not. Time a trudge going nowhere but death, which is dragging its heels. There being nothing beyond the hollow, circular walls of O’Connor’s grey, bunker cell except that other hell. The one that in 1957 might have spoken to a nuclear winter, today to global warming. Or to a nuclear winter.

Rory Nolan in Endgame. Image by Ros Kavanagh

Endgame, like a ship at sea, can change its direction with just a minimal degree of movement, ensuring no two productions are ever the same. Here comedy of the vaudevillian double act routine is leaned into by Nolan and Monaghan, who are both terrific. Their chemistry, honed over years, informing the denied depths of the co-dependent relationship shared by Beckett’s antagonists. Making their pain, arrogance and delusions all the more poignant. Their mundane questions, meditations and arguments artfully weaving a universe of meaningless meaning. Hynes’s assured direction foregrounding Endgame’s humanity and humour over its anguished absurdity. Its pained pointlessness reminding us that absurd situations make absurd people only because of the possibility, real or imagined, of something better. Even when yesterday, tomorrow, family and religion have all failed. Art perhaps? One suspects Beckett would be coiled up with laughter at the suggestion. Meaningful meditations on meaninglessness? You're having a laugh, right? Indeed we are.

Bosco Hogan and Marie Mullen in Endgame. Image by Ros Kavanagh

When Hamm and Clov argue, their anguish, delusions and frustrations are all too human and all too everyday. Not just philosophical pratfalls, but living screams, pleas and death rattles generating living laughter. Hynes restoring poignancy to the heart of Endgame. Its humour enriching its humanity. A play whose meta-theatricality highlights our strutting and fretting of our hour and thirty upon life’s stage. Yet it signifies everything. A superb addition to the best productions of Beckett's masterpiece.

Endgame by Samuel Beckett, directed by Garry Hynes, presented by Druid Theatre, runs at Town Hall Theatre as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2024 till July 28.

For more information visit Galway International Arts Festival 2024 or Druid Theatre