Word: hamme
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...conceived by Beckett, Endgame is a verbal battle between men on the verge of extinction. His stage directions call for a bare interior, grey light, and two small windows. The only furniture is an armchair and two garbage cans. In the armchair sits the blind Hamm who spends all his time lording over his adopted son Clov, who proves mysteriously, incapable of disobedience to Hamm's tyrannical dictates. Hamm's ancient and dying parents, Nag and Nell, dwell in the garbage cans...
...fine cast helps considerably, Clov, played by John Bottoms, embodies the desperation of a man at the end of his rope, he hisses at Hamm like a confused animal trapped in a cage. Rodney Hudson is superb as Nagg. He is a frightened and helpless old man without the innocent irrationality that makes the similar state of infancy bearable. When Nell dies, his face twists in heartbreaking agony as he sinks into his garbage...
Unfortunately, Akalaitis' re-interpretation loses some of the values of Beckett's conception. Hamm, looking like a Rastafarian king on his throne, lacks the self-consciousness befitting lines like, "An aside, Ape! Did you never hear an aside." Even the phrasing of that line suggests a more cultivated mind, acutely aware of his dramatic presence. Although Beckett's characters are painfully aware of their calculated, verbal chess match, Akalaitis' flail at each other in fits of rage. A more cold-blooded conversation would make Hamm's torture of Clov seem more horrifyingly vicious and his occasional displays of genuine emotion...
...multiple light sources, off-stage voices, incidental music, and those moments when Hamm and Clov overlap lines to create unintelligible gibberish all distract from the finely honed intensity of the play. Philip Glass's excellent score only works when the thundering drums and manic melody suddenly halt in the deathly silence that opens the show...
...compelling version of this great play. It is funny, full of an ironic humor that makes its profundity palatable and insidiously convincing. It is frightening, describing a world that has run out of bicycles, sweet-plums, coffins, pain-killer, honor, time, and God. After a futile attempt at prayer, Hamm screams, "Bastard! He doesn't exist." It shows mankind, having walked to the edge of the plank, hesitate before the leap that threatens oblivion or promises a new beginning...