Peter Viney's Blog

OK. Me too.

SEE ALSO: Endgame / Roughs for Theatre II, Old Vic, 2020

When I saw this in 2020, with an equally stellar cast (Alan Cummings as Hamm, Daniel Radcliffe as Clov) I concluded I might never bother with Beckett again (except for Godot). I admired the performances, but felt the play, which I would have thought incredible and powerful in the late 60s / early 70s when I was into the Theatre of the Absurd, now seemed unfunny and pretentiously arty. As unfunny almost as an old Goons or Spike Milligan TV show. Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

Then this came along, and the main attraction was ‘Directed by Lindsay Posner.’ That made it a ‘must see.’ The casting has some links. Alan Cummings in 2020 and Matthew Horne in 2025 came to wider fame in TV sitcom (The High Life / Gavin & Stacey). Then Daniel Radcliffe in 2020 and Matthew Horne in 2025 are actors known for extremely popular material, choosing serious, heavy acting roles. In this Douglas Hodge and Selina Cadell are directors as well as actors.

The set is angled, including the now popular lighted frame around the stage. Everything is skew-whiff, : crooked, tilted. The audience came in about ten minutes before the start. When it starts Clov (Matthew Horne) spends a few minutes messing around on a stepladder then uncovering the figure in the centre which is Douglas Hodge as Hamm. Then he had to sit motionless until his face cover, a blood spattered handkerchief, was removed. As well as never moving his legs for 90 minutes, he had to sit all over motionless for all that time. He might even have managed the dreadful Ustinov seats without squirming, which I didn’t. I was lost in admiration. We did a pantomime version of Frankenstein (really, a Christmas pantomime) and I was the monster and had to be motionless during the overture and long first scene. At least I was lying down and we had framed my covering cloth so I could breathe deeply without moving it.

If you haven’t seen or read it, Endgame, as in chess, has the ‘king’ confined to fewer and fewer possibilities. Hamm has lost movement in his legs, he is blind, he has one servant, Clov, who he probably found as a child. Even his pet dog is a stuffed toy and has one leg missing. He is totally dependent on Clov for movement, painkillers, access to the warmth of light, and communicating with the dustbin-confined pair. He also can only have a vision of the world as transmitted by Clov, and Clov lies.

Hamm’s mother and father lost their legs in a tandem bicycle accident and live in dustbins, their stumps stuck in sand (it used to be sawdust in better days) and subsist by sucking dog biscuits they’re too toothless to chew.

The Parents: Nell (Selina Cadell) and Nag (Clive Francis)

Hamm has a gaff pole to move his chair but that has ceased to work. One by one possibilities are removed from him: his parents die, the painkillers he relies on run out, and Clov is leaving. So it’s about death. There are lines of black comedy throughout.

A good innovation is that the dustbins in which Hamm’s parents are confined are now wheelie bins set in a mound of rubble, so that there would be a decent exit for the actors below and also they’re larger than metal dustbins like those adorning the posters and programme. They’re the kind we used to have before the council decided that we could get by on slimmer models and fortnightly collections instead of weekly ones. I do think about actors comfort.

I don’t know if Matthew Horne had some sort of harness to maintain his extraordinary limp. Hamm can’t stand. Clov can’t sit. Having an extreme limp is bad enough but maintaining it while clambering up and down stepladders which are on an angled floor, not a flat one, deserves some kind of award. Stepladder acting is essential, though he eschewed the potential slips and near falls that Daniel Radcliffe added in 2020.

The lighting is consistently murky, which works. I’m surprised how well it worked, but that may be because the theatre is so small. The only bright lights are spots when Nell (Selina Cadell) and Nagg (Clive Francis) emerge from their dustbins. Incidentally, that affects the production photos and the make up. The photos look more artificial than the make-up did in the theatre. I notice it immediately, because we had a famous German photographer take pictures of a murkily lit Waiting for Godot in the 1970s and the heavy make-up looks bizarre on still photos, but didn’t under stage lighting. Same here.

The deliberately irritating thing about the play is that Beckett seems to be teasing the audience with so many lines about Isn’t this enough? I can’t take any more of this as well as theatrical mentions This is dialogue, that’s an aside. This is what we call making an exit. He apparently wanted it played in a monotone to a metronome and I’m delighted that no one takes any notice of that whatsoever.

Note how detailed the stage directions are:

The directions belie the tale that Beckett wanted it played in a monotone. Hamm can be “ham” as in ‘ham actor’ and the play fiddles with the line between tales told in the story and the facts within the story. The characters seem aware they’re actors. Douglas Hodge enhanced it by going into a stage lovey (ham) voice at times, and Clive Francis used two accents for the tale, or failed extended joke that he tells.

Selina Cadell and Clive Francis were both utterly marvellous. She told her tale of Lake Como. He struggled through his tailor / God story. Their attempt to kiss was truly poignant.,

I thought it worked much better this time than in 2020, enriched by the set and lighting too. They angled to the black comedy aspect a little more.

THE USTINOV STUDIO

The theatre is an issue. It is uncomfortable in the stalls because there is no leg room below tthe seat in front, and they have horrible double lifting seats. It means if you’re above average height an hour is painful. Over an hour is excruciating. This is 95 minutes, no interval. You can’t play Endgame with an interval, so it’s not really suitable for this theatre. It was sold out in the stalls. I didn’t know it, but there is a loftier circle with three rows which is all I could get. These have even less leg room. The man next to me said he had phoned to ask about the leg room. They said it was the same. We are both regulars. We agreed it isn’t because of a metal bar in front. We had seats in row A but moved to the empty row B so we could spread out, but even so, there was not enough room to even twist my foot sideways. If you are over average height and they only have seats in the circle, don’t even consider it. I have been in painful seats before, but this was the worst ever. If it had been a full row, I would have left. If you’re under five foot three, you should be fine.

Could they lose a row? They’d have to rebuild. I guess lost revenue is irrelevant. I would assume these Ustinov productions rely on eventual transfer to London, not on ticket sales in Bath.
Seating: no stars.

OVERALL

This is really hard. All four performances, lighting, direction, set warrant four to even five stars. However, I know it is considered Beckett’s masterpiece (or one of them) but for me the play struggles to get to a three, and it was a two last time. Add that the theatre in the circle (this doesn’t bother press night reviewers) is excruciatingly uncomfortable.

*** (and I’m judging the play rather than the production).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

Nothing at the point I saw it and wrote this on Thursday 11th. Press night must have been the night before, or later the same day.

Five Star
Graham Wyles, Stage Talk *****

Four star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian ****
Kris Hallett What’s On Stage ****
Seth Wilby All That Dazzles ****

Three star
Holly O’Mahoney, The Stage ***
“Eerily jovial – a lightweight take”

(That’s what I liked about it)

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ENDGAME
Endgame / Roughs for Theatre II, Old Vic, 2020